sprain?"

"Of course you may," assented Winifred brightly. "And as for the
sprained ankle, wicked and deceitful creature that I am, I made it the
excuse for not going with Mrs. Latimer. Good people, really good people,
would think that I merited punishment for not doing my duty in my small
sphere of life. Yet see! Instead of that I'm rewarded--here _you_ come
to entertain Arthur and me!"

"It is a bad example!" decided Danvers, with a stern eye that did not
deceive anyone. He was amused at her naivete, and had no wish to decry
such open good-will.

"But I do limp! Don't I, Arthur?" Miss Blair appealed to the child,
gravely.

He nodded and stooped to examine the low, narrow shoe, peeping from her
sheer summer gown. Winifred pulled the foot back with a sudden flush. "I
am, perhaps, helping along in this world as much as though I were
playing cards, by staying with the children instead of their being with
the maid," she said hastily.

Philip leaned over to look at the baby. Arthur pulled the parasol to one
side proudly.

"Her name is Winifred," he announced.

"I believe I never saw a really little baby before," said Danvers,
looking with awe at the tiny sleeper. "My sister and I were near of an
age; we grew up together. How _little_ babies are!"

Miss Blair laughed. "Winifred is a very nice baby--big for her few
months of life. I'm very proud to be her godmother." Danvers watched as
she pulled the fleecy covering around the sleeping child. With the act a
maternal look came into her lovely face, unconscious as she was of
scrutiny, and a thrill of manhood shook him deeply.

"So you did not care for the party?" inquired the caller, presently. "I
thought all ladies adored card parties and enjoyed fighting for the
prizes."

"Play cards when the mountains look like that?" Winifred rejoined. "It
would be a sacrilege!"

"I do not care for cards myself," agreed Danvers.

"Wouldn't you like to be out there?" Winifred seemed scarcely to have
heard him.

Following the direction of her gaze, he thought her wide-flung gesture a
deserved tribute to the view. The Prickly Pear Valley lay before them,
checkered in vivid green or sage-drab as water had been given or
withheld. The Scratch Gravel Hills jutted impertinently into the middle
distance; while on the far western side of the plain the Jefferson Range
rose, tier on tier, the distances shading the climbing foothills, until
the Bear's Tooth, a prominent, jagged peak,