Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-03-08

lancey, of Her Majesty's Life Guards Blue.
Now, although Cal Layned had uttered
from time to time many disparaging re-
marks in regard to his prosperous young
neighbor similar to his speech at the round
up dinner party, he was in reality very
anxious to secure Jack Delaney for a som
in-law. As matter of fact it looked as if
this ambition OF the lazy stockman would in
all probability be gratihed. In older COM
munities Cal Larned's surliness and general
aptitude for picking quarrels might have
been laid to that very convenient scapegoat,
dyspepsia. On the plains of Wyoming that
disease is unknown, and as cowboys usually
call a spade spade, they passed upon Cal
vim Larned the very laconic but expressive
verdict of mean GUS To his general mean
ness Larned added the vice of laziness. for
which reason, undoubtedly, he was toler-
ably civil to Jack Delaney, and en-
couraged his pretty daughter, Meta, to ac-
cept the attentions paid her by the hand
some Englishman. He figured on the prob
ability that il Jack should marry Meta he
might pool his business interests with
those of his son-in-law by turning over his
miserably small herd of cattle to Delaney,
and himself roam hither and thither at his
own sweet will and at Jacks expense.
How the unsavory and unsatisfactory
Calvin ever became possessed of so pretty
and good girl as Meta Larned is one of
those conundrums the answers to which are
locked securely in Natures sealed books.
When Jack Delaney settled in Wyoming.
Meta was 20 years old. She had then lived
with her father on the plains for five or six
years. having left her mother a thousand
miles away in an Illinois graveyard. How
Jack Delaney came to pay marked atten-
tion to this girl is no conundrum at all. She
was the only manageable girl within days
ride ofthe Delaney ranch. Women are scarce
articles In Wyoming. and unmarried women
are especially few and far between. Meta
Larned was unmarried, she was young, and
she was pretty. Not only so; she was we'll
informed, fairly we'll educated, and DOS
sessed of much good common sense. She
was, from a social standpoint, the superior
of all her neighbors, except Jack Delaney
and, perhaps, Spencer Knight. (Knight
was peculiarly retlcent in regard to his ante
cedents, though that he had received q
liberal education became constantly more
apparently
Yes, Meta Larned was pretty; but she
had not the patrician beauty of hundred
and-one young danes whose acquaint-
ance and favor Delaney had for
sworn when he struck out for the West.
Met was clever; but there were many
branches of knowledge that formed the ABC
of jacks own sisters education of which
the girl was as ignorant as she was of Greek
verbs and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Met
dressed 'nattily, yet her neat homemade
gowns would have presented a rather
'dowdy' appearance alongside the most or
dinary efforts of Worth or Elise. To sum
up: Met Larned could thoroughly appre-
ciate good book in good English, she could
make an apron or hemstitch handkerchief
with the utmost neatness, and she could
manufacture pastry which would have re-
fected credit upon Partisan chef But
then
When Jack Delaney first saw Met, on q
breezy summer afternoon, with the sleeves
OF her simple white dress rolled up, huge
linen apron protecting her from the dusty
flour, while with her chubby hands she
fixed up batch of bread for supper, the
ex-guardsman involuntarily confessed to
himself that the girl looked killing But,
later on, as ne pondered over cigar, Jack
Delancey's good sense forced him to admit
that it you'd be EXTREMIST folly in him to
think OF girl like Met Larned as his future
wife. It was not snobbery, in that Delan-