you'll call me, and I'll come
a-running up to Alaska. And sometimes you'll come with me to
Brooklyn--we'll be a couple of bombs---- There's the train. Oh,
playmate, hurry with your engineering course! Hurry, hurry, hurry!
Because when it's done, then---- Whither thou goest, there I go also!
And you did bully me, you did, you did, and I like it, and---- Yes,
father, the bags are right here. Telephone me, minute you reach Seattle,
dear, and we'll have a private lesson in balancing tea-cups---- Yes,
father, I have the tickets. So glad, dear, the trip smashed up like
this--shocked me into reality--made me realize I've been with you every
hour since I dismissed you, back in Dakota, and you looked at me, big
hurt eyes, like a child, and---- Yes, father, Pullman's at the back.
Yes, I'm coming!"

"W-wait! D-did you know I was going to propose?"

"Yes. Ever since the Yellowstone. Been trying to think of a nice way to
refuse you. But there isn't any. You're like Pinky--can't get rid of
you--have t' adopt you. Besides, I've found out----"

"You love me?"

"I don't know! How can I tell? But I do like to drive with my head on
your shoulder and---- Yesssss, father, coming!"

CHAPTER XXIV

HER OWN PEOPLE

Mr. Henry B. Boltwood was decorously asleep in a chair in the
observation car, and Claire, on the wide back platform, sat unmoving,
apparently devoted to agriculture and mountain scenery. But it might
have been noted that her hand clenched one of the wooden supports of her
camp-stool, and that her hunched back did not move.

When she had turned to follow her father into the train, Milt had caught
her shoulders and kissed her.

For half an hour that kiss had remained, a perceptible warm pressure on
her lips. And for half an hour she had felt the relief of gliding
through the mountains without the strain of piloting, the comfort of
having the unseen, mysterious engineer up ahead automatically drive for
her. She had caroled to her father about nearing the Pacific. Her
nervousness had expressed itself in jerky gaiety.

But when he had sneaked away for a nap, and Claire could no longer hide
from herself by a veil of chatter the big decision she had made on the
station platform, then she was lonely and frightened--and very anxious
to undecide the decision. She could not think clearly. She could see
Milt Daggett only as a solemn young man in an inferior sweater,
standing by the track in a melancholy autumnal light, wavi