ant house and company coming all the--It's lucky that
there's plenty to do with. Henry's very liberal. He likes to have things
nice, so Ellen she--Why, when I was packing up to come away he brought me
that _repousse_ fruit-knife there in my bag--Oh, it's in my other bag!
Never mind; I'll show it to you some other time--solid silver, you know.
Bigelow and Kennard--their things always good, though expensive; and my
son-in-law he said, 'You're going to a fruit country, and--' Mrs. Peters
doesn't think there is so much fruit, though. All sent on from California,
as I wrote,--and I guess Ellen and Henry were surprised to hear it."

Katy held serious counsel with herself that night as to what she should do
about this extraordinary "guide, philosopher, and friend" whom the Fates
had provided for Clover. She saw that her father, from very over-anxiety,
had made a mistake, and complicated Clover's inevitable cares with a most
undesirable companion, who would add to rather than relieve them. She
could not decide what was best to do; and in fact the time was short for
doing anything, for the next evening would bring them to Denver, and poor
Clover must be left to face the situation by herself as best she might.

Katy finally concluded to write her father plainly how things stood, and
beg him to set Clover's mind quite at rest as to any responsibility for
Mrs. Watson, and also to have a talk with that lady herself, and explain
matters as clearly as she could. It seemed all that was in her power.

Next day the party woke to a wonderful sense of lightness and exhilaration
which no one could account for till the conductor told them that the
apparently level plain over which they were speeding was more than four
thousand feet above the sea. It seemed impossible to believe it. Hour by
hour they climbed; but the climb was imperceptible. Now four thousand six
hundred feet of elevation was reported, now four thousand eight hundred,
at last above five thousand; and still there seemed about them nothing
but a vast expanse of flat levels,--the table-lands of Nebraska. There was
little that was beautiful in the landscape, which was principally made up
of wide reaches of sand, dotted with cactus and grease-wood and with the
droll cone-shaped burrows of the prairie-dogs, who could be seen gravely
sitting on the roofs of their houses, or turning sudden somersaults in at
the holes on top as the train whizzed by. They passed and repassed long
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