rene interjected. "You
remember----"

"Dave?" said Mrs. Hardy, sharply. "You mean Mr. Elden."

The colour rose in the young woman's cheeks, but she stood by her guns.
"He was Dave in those days," she said. "It would be impossible to
think of a _mister_ galloping about over the foothills, swinging his
lariat, or smashing bottles with his six-shooter. Mister fits in with
the conventions; with tailors and perfume and evening dress, but it
doesn't seem to have any place in the foothills."

"You're right," Conward agreed. "Mister has no place on horseback. If
you were to go out on the ranges and begin mistering the cow-punchers,
like as not they'd lead you into camp at a rope-end. No man really
makes much of a hit in this country until everybody calls him by his
first name."

"Well, Mr. Elden seems to have made a hit, as you call it, with some of
his acquaintances," said Mrs. Hardy, with a touch of acidity. "I
think, Irene, you would do well to remember that we are not out on the
ranges, and that Mr. Elden no longer pursues his living with a lariat."

"It may be a point of view I have acquired in the West," Irene
persisted. "But I think it a greater courtesy to address a man by his
Christian name than by any artificial title. It is something like
admitting a guest into the kitchen--a privilege not extended to the
casual visitor. It seems like taking him into the family----"

"Merciful Heaven!" exclaimed Mrs. Hardy. "Have we come to that?"

Irene's cheeks and eyes grew brighter still. "Oh, I didn't mean that,"
she protested. "I was--I was employing a figure of speech."

So the talk drifted on, sometimes safely, sometimes through tortuous
channels that threatened at any moment to over-turn their little shell
of convention. But no such catastrophe occurred, and when, at length,
Mrs. Hardy began to show signs of weariness, Irene served coffee and
cake, and the two men, taking that as an intimation that their welcome
had run down, but would re-wind itself if not too continually drawn
upon, left the house together. On their way they agreed that it was a
very beautiful night.

Dave turned the situation over in his mind with some impatience. Irene
had now been in the city for several weeks, and he had had opportunity
for scarce a dozen personal words with her. Was he to be baulked by
such an insufferable chaperonage as it seemed the purpose of Mrs. Hardy
and Conward to establish over his love affair? No.