all right and have a
hearty laugh at your confusion, and begin to wonder what it is about
you.

"'How about falling off and spraining my ankle on the way back?' demands
the awakening vestal with a gleam in her eye.

"'No good,' I says; 'pretty enough for a minute, but it would make
trouble if you kept up the bluff, and if there's one thing a man hates
more than another it's to have a woman round that makes any trouble.'

"'You have me started on a strange new train of thought,' says Hetty.

"'I think it's a good one,' I tells her, 'but remember there are risks.
For one thing, you know how popular you have always been with all the
girls. Well, after this day none of 'em will hardly speak to you because
of your low-lifed, deceitful game, and the things they'll say of
you--such things as only woman can say of woman!'

"'I shall not count the cost,' says she firmly. 'And now I must hurry
down for that sport bloose--blue-striped, you said?'

"'Something on that order,' I says, 'that fits only too well. You can
do almost anything you want to with your neck and arms, but remember
strictly--a skirt is your one and only Non Plush Ultra.'

"So I went home all flushed and eager, thinking joyously how little
men--the poor dubs--ever suspect how it's put over on 'em, and the next
day, which was Friday, I thought of a few more underhand things she
could do. So when she run in to see me that afternoon, the excitement of
the chase in her eye, she wanted I should go along on this picnic. I
says yes, I will, being that excited myself and wanting to see really if
I was a double-faced genius or wasn't I? Henrietta Price couldn't go on
account of being still lame from her ride of a week ago, so I could go
as chaperone, and anyway I knew the dear girls would all be glad to have
me because I would look so different from them--like a genial old ranch
foreman going out on rodeo--and the boys was always glad to see me along
anyway. 'I'll be there,' I says to Hetty. 'And here--don't forget at all
times to-morrow to carry this little real lace handkerchief I'm giving
you.'

"I was at the meeting-place next morning at nine. None of the other
girls was on time, of course, but that was just as well, because Aggie
Tuttle had got her father to come down to the sale yard to pack a mule
with the hampers of lunch. Jeff Tuttle is a good packer all right, but
too inflamed in the case of a mule, which he hates. They always know up
and down that str