m his teeth, the
swift buttoning of his shirt across his chest. And as he stared at her
he gasped:

"I'll be----"

"Say it!" laughed Terry. "Well, I'm here. Came on business. There's
a hole in the toe of your sock," she ended with a flash of malice, as
she noted how, embarrassed for the first time since she had known him,
he was trying to hide a pair of man-sized feet behind his table.

[Illustration: "Say it!" laughed Terry. "Well, I'm here. Came on
business."]

Steve grew violently red. Terry laughed deliciously.

"I--I didn't know----"

"Of course you didn't," she agreed. "Now, I'm in something of a rush
of the red streak variety, but in a little book of mine I have read
that a young gentleman receiving a young lady caller after dark should
have his hair combed, his shirt buttoned, and at least a pair of
slippers on. I'll give you three minutes."

Packard looked at her wonderingly. Then, without an answer, he strode
by her and to the window. The shade he flipped up so that anyone who
cared to might look into the room. Next he went to the door and called:

"Bill, oh, Bill Royce. Come up here. Here's some one who wants a word
with you!"

Terry Temple's face went a burning, burning red. There came the
impulse to put both arms about this big shirt-sleeved, tousled Packard
man and squeeze him hard--and at the end of it pinch him harder. For
in Terry's soul was understanding, and he both delighted her and shamed
her.

But when Steve came back and slipped his feet into his boots and sat
down across the table from her, Terry's face told him nothing.

"You're a funny guy, Steve Packard," she admitted thoughtfully.

"That's nothing," grinned Steve, by now quite himself again. "So are
you!"

She had come from the Temple ranch without any hat; her hair had
tumbled down long ago and now framed her vivacious face most adorably.
Adorably, that is, to a man's mind; other women are not always agreed
upon such matters. At any rate, Steve watched with both admiration and
regret in his eyes as Terry shook out the loose bronze tresses and
began to bring neat order out of bewilderingly becoming chaos. Her
mouth was full of pins when Bill Royce came in. But still she could
whisper tantalizingly--

"If you picked on Bill for a chaperon because he's blind----"

Royce stopped in the doorway.

"That you, Terry Temple?" he asked. "An' you wanted me? What's up?"

"I came to have a talk with Steve Pack