ming to me, and
just what I'm going to get!" said Douglass, obstinately. "It'll be
plenty for what I am going to do with it."

Carter sprang up, stormily: "Don't be any more of an ass than God
intended you to be. Quixotism went out centuries ago. You're going to
get what's actually due you!"

"And that is a hundred odd, I believe you make it, Mr. Douglass?"
interrupted Grace, evenly, with a look of imperious warning at her
brother. "Can't you see, dear, that he is right! Now no more petty
bickering between you two foolish boys. Don't look so desolated, Bobbie;
Mr. Douglass does not intend this as a preamble to his resignation; he
is not going to leave us. There are no quitters on the C Bar."

"Let me write the check," she continued, in hasty trepidation, not
daring to look at the man she had so audaciously preempted to their
service. "Not a word, leave it to me!" she whispered tensely to her
brother, whose lips were again opening in protest. "For heaven's sake,
don't spoil it all!"

As she dipped the pen in the ink she hesitated: "Your given name, Mr.
Douglass? I have never learned it in full."

"Kenneth--Kenneth Malcolm," he said shortly. She bit her lip as she
wrote hurriedly; he was so deliciously pompous!

"And the exact amount?" He handed her the memorandum. "One hundred and
six dollars. Please approve this, Bobbie." She extended the paper to
her brother, pinching him viciously under the table as he hesitated.
"Quick!" she breathed, almost hissingly, and he scrawled the necessary
endorsement. Then she wrote the amount in the body of the check. Carter
signed it wrathfully, and she tendered it to Douglass with a smile.

"There! Now you are square with the world," she said, facetiously, but
her lips were tremulous with anxiety; he had been so distressingly
noncommittal as to that resignation!

"Not exactly with the whole world!" he said, grimly. "I've got a few
other trifling obligations to discharge before I can subscribe to that
flattering assumption."

"Don't think me ungrateful for your kindness," he continued, earnestly.
"I appreciate your invitation more than you know; but you see, this
would not go very far in luxurious old New York. It wouldn't more than
hardly pay my fare there, and really my presence here is imperative for
some indefinite time. I had no intention of resigning, but I am going to
ask the favor of a month's leave of absence. McVey is perfectly
competent to handle the outfit until my