again in
tremulous indignation. "Go away? Did I ah--understand you to tell me to
go away, sir? I ah-h-h----" but words failed him, and he shuffled out of
the wash-room, cannoning against the little gentleman in the grass-cloth
duster and velvet skull-cap in the angle of the vestibule.

"Good-morning, Mr. Brockway," said the comforter, cheerily. "Been having
a tilt with Mr. Ticket-limits to begin the day with?"

"Oh, as a matter of course," Brockway replied, flinging the damp towel
into a corner, and brushing his hair as one who transmutes wrath into
vigorous action.

"Find him a bit trying, don't you? What particular form does his mania
take this morning?"

"It's the same old thing. I promised him, yesterday, I'd get the
extension on his ticket, and now he says he won't leave Denver till it's
done. He 'ah-protests' that I sha'n't go to Silver Plume with the party;
wants me to stay in Denver and put in the day telegraphing."

"Of course, you'll do it; you do anything anybody asks you to."

"Oh, I suppose I'll have to--to keep the peace. And if I don't go and
'personally conduct' the others, there'll be the biggest kind of a row.
Isn't it enough to wear the patience of a good-natured angel to
frazzles?"

"It is, just that. Have a cigar?"

"No, thank you. I don't smoke before breakfast."

"Neither do I, normally; but like most other people, I leave all my good
habits at home when I travel. But about Jordan and the thirty-odd; how
are you going to dodge the row?"

"The best way I can. There is a good friend of mine on the train--Mr.
John Burton, the general agent of the C. & U., in Salt Lake--and perhaps
I can get him to go up the canyon for me."

"Think he will do it?"

"I guess so; to oblige me. He'd lose only a day; and he'd make
thirty-odd friends for the C. & U., don't you see."

"I must confess that I don't see, from a purely business point of view,"
was the rejoinder. "We are all ticketed out and back, and we can't
change our route if we want to."

Brockway laughed. "The business of passenger soliciting is far-reaching.
Some of you--perhaps most of you--will go again next year; and if the
general agent of the C. & U. is particularly kind and obliging, you may
remember his line."

"Dear me--why, of course! You say your friend is on the train?"

"Yes."

"Very well; you go and see him, and I'll help you out by breaking the
news to the thirty-odd."

Brockway struggled into his coat and shook hand