ensiveness. He had practised it in several capitals with some
success. A dozen times this evening, a neat compliment came to his lips
and stopped there. He could hardly understand his own reserve before
this laughing young lady. Why should he not say something pretty about
her hair and eyes, about her graceful attitude, about the nimble play
of her white fingers over the paper? He had uttered frank flatteries to
peeresses without rebuke. But he held his hand before this school-girl,
with the open dark-brown eyes and a club of yellow hair at the back of
her neck. He could not help feeling that, if he talked to her with any
forcing of the personal accent, she would stop laughing and the clear
eyes would be troubled. He desired anything rather than that, and so
the conversation went rattling on as free from personalities as the
talk of two light-hearted and clever schoolboys.

At one moment he was describing a bill of fare in a Colorado hotel.

"With nice bread, though, one can always get on," she said.

"True," Farnham answered; "but this bread was of a ghostly pallor and
flatness, as if it had been baked by moonlight on a grave-stone."

"The Indian women cook well, do they not?" she asked.

"Some are not so bad as others. One young chief boasted to me of his
wife's culinary accomplishments. He had been bragging all the morning
about his own exploits, of the men he had killed and the horses he had
stolen, and then to establish his standing clearly in my mind, he
added: 'My squaw same white squaw--savey pie.'"

"Even there, then, the trail of the pie-crust is over them all."

"No! only over the aristocracy."

"I should like so much to see that wonderful country."

"It is worth seeing," he said, with a curious sinking of the heart, "if
you are not under orders."

He could not help thinking what a pleasant thing a journey through that
Brobdingnaggian fairy-land would be with company like the young girl
before him. Nature would be twice as lovely reflected from those brown
eyes. The absurdities and annoyances of travel would be made delightful
by that frank, clear laugh. The thought of his poor Nellie flitted by
him an instant, too gentle and feeble for reproach. Another stronger
thought had occupied his mind.

"You ought to see it. Your mother will need rest before long from her
Rescue-the-Perishings, and you are overworking yourself dreadfully over
that sketch-book. There is a touch of malaria about the fountain