American Continent no white woman had ever been put to a like
test. Whether she felt this intuitively or whether she had learned it
from the squaws who had visited the big cities as they recounted the
adoration extended by the male to the weaker sex as a part and parcel of
civilization, it matters not.

Jack knew that he was at as great a disadvantage in her presence as if
at the mercy of the divinest coquette in all of God's country. He
essayed to answer, but something restrained him. It was not fear; it was
not because he had his own misgivings on the subject, nor was it because
he had no ready reply. Nevertheless, he waited and in his mind he tried
to picture one of the belles of society bucking snow to save some
football graduate from death, or one sleeping in the open air, without a
chaperon, and a man in the same canon. What _would_ Mrs. Grundy
say? Of course he thought of the story by an eminent author where there
was a scuttled ship laden with gold, a clergyman and a rich man's
daughter cast upon an unknown island, and Jack acknowledged he had never
heard of Mrs. Grundy making unkind remarks about that tale. But that was
the result of accident, and mortuary tables classify accidental risks in
a category by themselves.

Chiquita had suggested the society belle who would voluntarily give up
half her estate for a real live, accidental romance that did not incur
too much danger. Would she leave her maid and steam radiator and in the
midst of a western blizzard sally forth to carry coal up three flights
of stairs to a poor, benighted student, and then sleep on the doormat,
for any reward there might be in store for her, either from a
consciousness of having performed a creditable act or because she loved
him?

Of course, Jack knew there was no occasion ever presented where a loving
young thing, just out of the sixth grade, had been called upon to carry
anything any more formidable than a bunch of roses to a sick friend, and
the modern equipages splashed only a little dirty water over roads well
kept from snowdrifts by indulgent taxpayers. Still, the question had
been asked, and he manfully determined to stand up for the fair ones
across the range.

"Si, Senorita Chiquita, the Indian maiden has said it. The pale-faced
sisters of Jack would save their white brothers--even their red brothers
and their black brothers. The fair sisters of the white man brave death
in many ways for their white brothers. See, Chiquita,