f the house.

"Are you going my way, Mr. Conniston?"

Conniston said that he was, and swung down, walking at her side and
leading his horse.

"If you really _do_ care to come to see me," Jocelyn said, quickly,
before the cowboy had rejoined them, "you may call this evening."

Conniston thanked her, and, not to seem rude, said that he would drop
in after he and Tommy Garton had finished their work. Jocelyn smiled
at him brightly.

"You may come early, if you like. I am sure that you will have a whole
lot of things to tell me about the progress you and papa are making
with the ditch. I'm _so_ interested in the work, Mr. Conniston."

Pete had taken up his horse's dragging reins and led him into the
street. Jocelyn, her chin a trifle lifted, her air more than a trifle
coquettish as she smiled at Conniston, pretended not to see her
red-headed adorer. Walking between the two men, she even tilted her
parasol so that it did no slightest good in the world in the matter of
protecting her from the sun, but served very effectively in shutting
out Lonesome Pete. Conniston laughed and talked lightly with her,
vastly amused at the situation and the discomfiture upon her ardent
lover's expressive face. And so, with Pete trudging along in silence,
unnoticed, they came to the office and stopped, Jocelyn and Conniston
still talking to each other, Lonesome Pete tying and untying knots in
his bridle-reins.

"Can't you give up enough of your precious time to walk on home with
me? I have some icy cold lemonade waiting for me," she tempted.

"I'm sorry. I'd like to, but I've got a lot of work to get over with
Garton--"

Only three or four doors from the office was the little cottage which
he had helped Argyl to prepare for her father. Even while he was
making his excuses he saw the door open, and Argyl herself, lithe and
trim in her gray riding-habit, step out upon the tiny porch.

"I beg pardon," he broke off, suddenly. "I--Will you excuse me?"

And, jerking his horse's reins so that the animal started up after him
at a trot, he strode down the street, his hat off, his face lifted
eagerly to Argyl's. A moment later he was holding her hand in his,
oblivious of Jocelyn, Pete, Valley City, everything in the world
except the girl with the big gray eyes, the girl whom he had seen
through his shifting day-dreams.

When the cowboy and the schoolmistress passed him Lonesome Pete was
talking once more and she was being very gracious to