and sat
with it across his knees, staring absently at the spur of mountains
which Beth Rathburn had come to feel she detested. She tingled with
irritation. She wanted to say something mean, something to make him feel
sorry and apologetic.

She did not quite dare to speak sneeringly of Kate with no apparent
provocation, but a violent gust of wind that snatched off her veil and
disarranged her carefully dressed hair furnished an excuse to rail
against the country.

"Goodness!" she cried explosively, as she lifted the short ends of hair
out of her eyes and replaced them. "Will this everlasting wind _never_
stop blowing!"

The fact that Disston did not even hear added to her exasperation. The
soft voice, which was one of her many charms, was distinctly shrill as
she reiterated:

"I say, will this everlasting wind _never stop blowing_?"

"It is disagreeable," he murmured, without looking at her.

"Disagreeable? It's horrible! I detest the country and everybody in it!"

Mrs. Rathburn shook her head reprovingly, but at the same moment another
violent gust swept around the corner and lifted not only that lady's
broad-brimmed hat, but her expensive "transformation."

Mrs. Rathburn replaced it with guilty haste, and declared furiously:

"I must say I agree with my daughter--the country and its people are
equally impossible."

"I'm sorry," Disston replied contritely. "I shouldn't have urged you to
come, but I was hoping you would like it--its picturesqueness, the
unconventionality, and the dozen-and-one other things which appeal to me
so strongly. In my enthusiasm, perhaps I exaggerated."

"I can't see anything picturesque in discomfort," Miss Rathburn
retorted. "There's nothing picturesque in trying to bathe in water that
curdles when you put soap in it, and makes your hands like nutmeg
graters; or in servants who call you by your first name; or in trying to
ride scraggly horses that have no gaits and shake you to pieces; or
anything even moderately interesting about a country where there are no
trees to sit under and nothing to look at but sagebrush, and rocks, and
prairie dogs, and mountains, and not a soul that one can know socially!"

"I had no notion you disliked it out here so much, Beth," he replied
gravely.

But he was not sufficiently apologetic, not sufficiently humble. She
went on in a tone in which spite was uppermost:

"And furthermore, if unconventionality could ever make me look and act
like that