rs seemed to make the reserve with which she tried to
crush further familiarity only ridiculous.

"Do you know many operas, Miss Carr?"

She looked at the boyish, interested, sunburnt face so near to her
own, and hesitated. After all, why should she add to her other real
disappointments by taking this absurd creature seriously?

"In what way?" she returned, with a half smile.

"To play. On the piano, of course. There isn't one nearer here than
Sacramento; but I reckon we could get a small one by Thursday. You
couldn't do anything on a banjo?" he added doubtfully; "Kearney's got
one."

"I imagine it would be very difficult to carry a piano over those
mountains," said Christie laughingly, to avoid the collateral of the
banjo.

"We got a billiard-table over from Stockton," half bashfully interrupted
Dick Mattingly, struggling from his end of the trunk to recover his
composure, "and it had to be brought over in sections on the back of a
mule, so I don't see why--" He stopped short again in confusion, at a
sign from his brother, and then added, "I mean, of course, that a piano
is a heap more delicate, and valuable, and all that sort of thing, but
it's worth trying for."

"Fairfax was always saying he'd get one for himself, so I reckon it's
possible," said Joe.

"Does he play?" asked Christie.

"You bet," said Joe, quite forgetting himself in his enthusiasm. "He can
snatch Mozart and Beethoven bald-headed."

In the embarrassing silence that followed this speech the fringe of pine
wood nearest the flat was reached. Here there was a rude "clearing," and
beneath an enormous pine stood the two recently joined tenements. There
was no attempt to conceal the point of junction between Kearney's
cabin and the newly-transported saloon from the flat--no architectural
illusion of the palpable collusion of the two buildings, which seemed
to be telescoped into each other. The front room or living room occupied
the whole of Kearney's cabin. It contained, in addition to the necessary
articles for housekeeping, a "bunk" or berth for Mr. Carr, so as to
leave the second building entirely to the occupation of his daughters as
bedroom and boudoir.

There was a half-humorous, half-apologetic exhibition of the rude
utensils of the living room, and then the young men turned away as the
two girls entered the open door of the second room. Neither Christie nor
Jessie could for a moment understand the delicacy which kept these young
men f