ich doesn't stay up
pretty late," laughed Lidgerwood. Then he came closer and spoke to Miss
Brewster. "I am going west in my car, and I don't know just when I shall
return. Please tell your father that everything we have here is entirely
at his service. If you don't see what you want, you are to ask for it."

"Will there be any one to ask when you are gone?" she inquired, neither
sorrowing nor rejoicing, so far as he could determine.

"Oh, yes; McCloskey, my trainmaster, will be in from the wreck before
morning, and he will turn flip-flaps trying to make things pleasant for
you, if you will give him the chance."

She made the adorable little grimace which always carried him swiftly
back to a certain summer of ecstatic memories; to a time when her
keenest retort had been no more than a playful love-thrust and there had
been no bitterness in her mockery.

"Will he make dreadful faces at me, as he did at you this morning when
you went down among the smashed cars at the wreck to speak to him?" she
asked.

"So you were looking out of the window, too, were you? You are a close
observer and a good guesser. That was Mac, and--yes, he will probably
make faces at you. He can't help it any more than he can help
breathing."

Miss Brewster was running her fingers along the hand-rail as if it were
the key-board of a piano. "You say you don't know how long you will be
away?" she asked.

"No; but probably not more than the night. I was only providing for the
unexpected, which some people say is what always happens."

"Will your run take you as far as the Timanyoni Canyon?"

"Yes; through it, and some little distance beyond."

"You have just said that we are to ask for what we want. Did you mean
it?"

"Surely," he replied unguardedly.

"Then we may as well begin at once," she said coolly; and turning
quickly to the others: "O all you people; listen a minute, will you?
Hush, Carolyn! What do you say to a moonlight ride through one of the
grandest canyons in the West in Mr. Lidgerwood's car? It will be
something to talk about as long as you live. Don't all speak at once,
please."

But they did. There was an instant and enthusiastic chorus of approval,
winding up rather dolefully, however, with Miss Doty's, "But your mother
will never consent to it, Eleanor!"

"Mr. Lidgerwood will never consent, you mean," put in Miriam Holcombe
quietly.

Lidgerwood said what he might without being too crudely inhospitable.
His car was