CHAPTER V.

CAR FORTY-SEVEN.

It is they who stay behind who suffer most from leave-takings. Those who go have the continual change of scenes and impressions to help them to forget; those who remain must bear as best they may the dull heavy sense of loss and separation.

The parting at Burnet was not a cheerful one. Clover was oppressed with the nearness of untried responsibilities; and though she kept up a brave face, she was inwardly homesick. Phil slept badly the night before the start, and looked so wan and thin as he stood on the steamer's deck beside his sisters, waving good-by to the party on the wharf, that a new and sharp thrill of anxiety shot through his father's heart. The boy looked so young and helpless to be sent away ill among strangers, and round-faced little Clover seemed such a fragile support! There was no help for it. The thing was decided on, decided for the best, as they all hoped; but Dr. Carr was not at all happy in his mind as he watched the steamer become a gradually lessening speck in the distance, and he sighed heavily when at last he turned away.

Elsie echoed the sigh. She, too, had noticed Phil's looks and papa's gravity, and her heart felt heavy within her. The house, when they reached it, seemed lonely and empty. Papa went at once to his office, and they heard him lock the door. This was such an unusual proceeding in the middle of the morning that she and Johnnie opened wide eyes of dismay at each other.

"Is papa crying, do you suppose?" whispered John.

"No, I don't think it can be that. Papa never does cry; but I'm afraid he's feeling badly," responded Elsie, in the same hushed tone. "Oh, dear, how horrid it is not even to have Clover at home! What are we going to do without her and Katy?"

"I don't know I'm sure. You can't think how queer I feel, Elsie,—just as if my heart had slipped out of its place, and was going down, down into my boots. I think it must be the way people feel when they are homesick. I had it once before when I was at Inches Mills, but never since then. How I wish Philly had never gone to skate on that nasty pond!" and John burst into a passion of tears.

"Oh, don't, don't!" cried poor Elsie, for Johnnie's sobs were infectious, and she felt an ominous lump coming into her own throat, "don't behave so, Johnnie. Think if papa came out, and found us crying! Clover particularly said that we must make the house bright for him. I'm going to sow the mignonette seed [desperately]; come and help me. The trowel is on the back porch, and you might get Dorry's jack-knife and cut some little sticks to mark the places."

This expedient was successful. Johnnie, who loved to "whittle" above all things, dried her tears, and ran for her shade hat; and by the time the tiny brown seeds were sprinkled into the brown earth of the borders, both the girls were themselves again. Dr. Carr appeared from his retirement half an hour later. A note had come for him meanwhile, but somehow no one had quite liked to knock at the door and deliver it.

Elsie handed it to him now, with a timid, anxious look, whose import seemed to strike him, for he laughed a little, and pinched her cheek as he read.

"I've been writing to Dr. Hope about the children," he said; "that's all. Don't wait dinner for me, chicks. I'm off for the Corners to see a boy who's had a fall, and I'll get a bite there. Order something good for tea, Elsie; and afterward we'll have a game of cribbage if I'm not called out. We must be as jolly as we can, or Clover will scold us when she comes back."

Meanwhile the three travellers were faring through the first stage of their journey very comfortably. The fresh air and change brightened Phil; he ate a good dinner, and afterward took quite a long nap on a sofa, Clover sitting by to keep him covered and see that he did not get cold. Late in the evening they changed to the express train, and there again, Phil, after being tucked up behind the curtains of his section, went to sleep and passed a satisfactory night, so that he reached Chicago looking so much better than when they left Burnet that his father's heart would have been lightened could he have seen him.

Mrs. Ashe came down to the station to meet them, together with Mr. Dayton,—a kind, friendly man with a tired but particularly pleasant face. All the necessary transfer of baggage, etc., was made easy, and they were carried off at once to the hotel where rooms had been secured. There they were rapturously received by Amy, and introduced to Mrs. Dayton, a sweet, spirited little matron, with a face as kindly as her husband's, but not so worn. Mr. Dayton looked as if for years he had been bearing the whole weight of a railroad on his shoulders, as in one sense it may be said that he had.

"We have been here almost a whole day," said Amy, who had taken possession, as a matter of course, of her old perch on Katy's knee. "Chicago is the biggest place you ever saw, Tanta; but it isn't so pretty as Burnet. And oh! don't you think Car Forty-seven is nice,—the one we are going out West in, you know? And this morning Mr. Dayton took us to see it. It's the cunningest place that ever was. There's one dear little drawer in the wall that Mrs. Dayton says I may have to keep Mabel's things in. I never saw a drawer in a car before. There's a lovely little bedroom too, and such a nice washing-basin, and a kitchen, and all sorts of things. I can hardly wait till I show them to you. Don't you think that travelling is the most delightful thing in the world, Miss Clover?"

"Yes—if only—people—don't get too tired," said Clover, with an anxious glance at Phil, as he lay back in an easy-chair. She did not dare say, "if Phil doesn't get too tired," for she had already discovered that nothing annoyed him so much as being talked about as an invalid, and that he was very apt to revenge himself by doing something imprudent immediately afterward, to disguise from an observant world the fact that he couldn't do it without running a risk. Like most boys, he resented being "fussed over,"—a fact which made the care of him more difficult than it would otherwise have been.

The room which had been taken for Clover and Katy looked out on the lake, which was not far away; and the reach of blue water would have made a pretty view if trains of cars had not continually steamed between it and the hotel, staining the sky and blurring the prospect with their smokes. Katy wondered how it happened that the early settlers who laid out Chicago had not bethought themselves to secure this fine water frontage as an ornament to the future city; but Mr. Dayton explained that in the rapid growth of Western towns, things arranged themselves rather than were arranged for, and that the first pioneers had other things to think about than what a New Englander would call "sightliness,"—and Katy could easily believe this to be true.

Car Forty-seven was on the track when they drove to the station at noon next day. It was the end car of a long express train, which, Mr. Dayton told them, is considered the place of honor, and generally assigned to private cars. It was of an old-fashioned pattern, and did not compare, as they were informed, with the palaces on wheels built nowadays for the use of railroad presidents and directors. But though Katy heard of cars with French beds, plunge baths, open fireplaces, and other incredible luxuries, Car Forty-seven still seemed to her inexperienced eyes and Clover's a marvel of comfort and convenience.

A small kitchen, a store closet, and a sort of baggage-room, fitted with berths for two servants, occupied the end of the car nearest the engine. Then came a dressing-closet, with ample marble basins where hot water as well as cold was always on tap; then a wide state-room, with a bed on either side, and then a large compartment occupying the middle of the car, where by day four nice little dining-tables could be set, with a seat on either side, and by night six sleeping sections made up. The rest of the car was arranged as a sitting-room, glassed all around, and furnished with comfortable seats of various kinds, a writing-desk, two or three tables of different sizes, and various small lockers and receptacles, fitted into the partitions to serve as catch-alls for loose articles of all sorts.

Bunches of lovely roses and baskets of strawberries stood on the tables; and quite a number of the Daytons' friends had come down to see them off, each bringing some sort of good-by gift for the travellers,—flowers, hothouse grapes, early cherries, or home-made cake. They were all so cordial and pleasant and so interested in Phil, that Katy and Clover lost their hearts to each in turn, and forever afterward were ready to stand up for Chicago as the kindest place that ever was seen.

Then amid farewells and good wishes the train moved slowly out of the station, and the inmates of Car Forty-seven proceeded to "go to housekeeping," as Mrs. Dayton expressed it, and to settle themselves and their belongings in these new quarters. Mrs. Ashe and Amy, it was decided, should occupy the state-room, and the other ladies were to dress there when it was convenient. Sections were assigned to everybody,—Clover's opposite Phil's so that she might hear him if he needed anything in the night; and Mr. Dayton called for all the bonnets and hats, and amid much laughter proceeded to pin up each in thick folds of newspaper, and fasten it on a hook not to be taken down till the end of the journey. Mabel's feathered turban took its turn with the rest, at Amy's particular request. Dust was the main thing to be guarded against, and Katy, having been duly forewarned, had gone out in the morning, and bought for herself and Clover soft hats of whity-gray felt and veils of the same color, like those which Mrs. Dayton and Polly had provided for the journey, and which had the advantage of being light as well as unspoilable.

But there was no dust that first morning, as the train ran smoothly across the fertile prairies of Illinois first, and then of Iowa, between fields dazzling with the fresh green of wheat and rye, and waysides studded with such wild-flowers as none of them had ever seen or dreamed of before. Pink spikes and white and vivid blue spikes; masses of brown and orange cups, like low-growing tulips; ranks of beautiful vetches and purple lupines; escholtzias, like immense sweeps of golden sunlight; wild sweet peas; trumpet-shaped blossoms whose name no one knew,—all flung broadcast over the face of the land, and in such stintless quantities that it dazzled the mind to think of as it did the eyes to behold them. The low-lying horizons looked infinitely far off; the sense of space was confusing. Here and there appeared a home-stead, backed with a "break-wind" of thickly-planted trees; but the general impression was of vast, still distance, endless reaches of sky, and uncounted flowers growing for their own pleasure and with no regard for human observation.

In studying Car Forty-seven, Katy was much impressed by the thoroughness of Mrs. Dayton's preparations for the comfort of her party. Everything that could possibly be needed seemed to have been thought of,—pins, cologne, sewing materials, all sorts of softening washes for the skin, to be used on the alkaline plains, sponges to wet and fasten into the crown of hats, other sponges to breathe through, medicines of various kinds, sticking-plaster, witch-hazel and arnica, whisk brooms, piles of magazines and novels, telegraph blanks, stationery. Nothing seemed forgotten. Clover said that it reminded her of the mother of the Swiss Family Robinson and that wonderful bag out of which everything was produced that could be thought of, from a grand piano to a bottle of pickles; and after that "Mrs. Robinson" became Mrs. Dayton's pet name among her fellow-travellers. She adopted it cheerfully; and her "wonderful bag" proving quite as unfailing and trustworthy as that of her prototype, the title seemed justified.

Pretty soon after starting came their first dinner on the car. Such a nice one!—soup, roast chicken and lamb, green peas, new potatoes, stewed tomato; all as hot and as perfectly served as if they had been "on dry land," as Amy phrased it. There was fresh curly lettuce too, with mayonnaise dressing, and a dessert of strawberries and ice-cream,—the latter made and frozen on the car, whose resources seemed inexhaustible. The cook had been attached to Car Forty-seven for some years, and had a celebrity on his own road for the preparation of certain dishes, which no one else could do as well, however many markets and refrigerators and kitchen ranges might be at command. One of these dishes was a peculiar form of cracked wheat, made crisp and savory after some mysterious fashion, and eaten with thick cream. Like most chefs, the cook liked to do the things in which he excelled, and finding that it was admired, he gave the party this delicious wheat every morning.

"The car seems paved with bottles of Apollinaris and with lemons," wrote Katy to her father. "There seems no limit to the supply. Just as surely as it grows warm and dusty, and we begin to remember that we are thirsty, a tinkle is heard, and Bayard appears with a tray,—iced lemonade, if you please, made with Apollinaris water with strawberries floating on top! What do you think of that at thirty miles an hour? Bayard is the colored butler. The cook is named Roland. We have a fine flavor of peers and paladins among us, you perceive.

"The first day out was cool and delicious, and we had no dust. At six o'clock we stopped at a junction, and our car was detached and run off on a siding. This was because Mr. Dayton had business in the place, and we were to wait and be taken on by the next express train soon after midnight. At first they ran us down to a pretty place by the side of the river, where it was cool, and we could look out on the water and a green bank opposite, and we thought we were going to have such a nice night; but the authorities changed their minds, and presently to our deep disgust a locomotive came puffing down the road, clawed us up, ran us back, and finally left us in the middle of innumerable tracks and switches just where all the freight trains came in and met. All night long they were arriving and going out. Cars loaded with cattle, cars loaded with sheep, with pigs! Such bleatings and mooings and gruntings, I never heard in all my life before. I could think of nothing but that verse in the Psalms, 'Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round,' and could only hope that the poor animals did not feel half as badly as they sounded.

"Then long before light, as we lay listening to these lamentable roarings and grunts, and quite unable to sleep for heat and noise, came the blessed express, and presently we were away out of all the din, with the fresh air of the prairie blowing in; and in no time at all we were so sound asleep that it seemed but a minute before morning. Phil's slumbers lasted so long that we had to breakfast without him, for Mrs. Dayton would not let us wake him up. You can't think how kind she is, and Mr. Dayton too; and this way of travelling is so easy and delightful that it scarcely seems to tire one at all. Phil has borne the journey wonderfully well so far."

At Omaha, on the evening of the second day, Clover's future "matron" and adviser, Mrs. Watson, was to join them. She had been telegraphed to from Chicago, and had replied, so that they knew she was expecting them. Clover's thoughts were so occupied with curiosity as to what she would turn out to be, that she scarcely realized that she was crossing the Mississippi for the first time, and she gave scant attention to the low bluffs which bound the river, and on which the Indians used to hold their councils in those dim days when there was still an "undiscovered West" set down in geographies and atlases.

As soon as they reached the Omaha side of the river, she and Katy jumped down from the car, and immediately found themselves face to face with an anxious-looking little old lady, with white hair frizzled and banged over a puckered forehead, and a pair of watery blue eyes peering from beneath, evidently in search of somebody. Her hands were quite full of bags and parcels, and a little heap of similar articles lay on the platform near her, of which she seemed afraid to lose sight for a moment.

"Oh, is it Miss Carr?" was her first salutation. "I'm Mrs. Watson. I thought it might be you, from the fact that you got out of that car, and it seems rather different—I am quite relieved to see you. I didn't know but something—My daughter she said to me as I was coming away, 'Now, Mother, don't lose yourself, whatever you do. It seems quite wild to think of you in Canyon this and Canyon that, and the Garden of the Gods! Do get some one to keep an eye on you, or we shall never hear of you again. You'll—' It's quite a comfort that you have got here. I supposed you would, but the uncertainty—Oh, dear! that man is carrying off my trunks. Please run after him and tell him to bring them back!"

"It's all right; he's the porter," explained Mr. Dayton. "Did you get your checks for Denver or St. Helen's?"

"Oh, I haven't any checks yet. I didn't know which it ought to be, so I waited till—Miss Carr and her brother would see to it for me I knew, and I wrote my daughter—My friend, Mrs. Peters,—I've been staying with her, you know,—was sick in bed, and I wouldn't let—Dear me! what has that gentleman gone off for in such a hurry?"

"He has gone to get your checks," said Clover, divided between diversion and dismay at this specimen of her future "matron." "We only stay here a few minutes, I believe. Do you know exactly when the train starts, Mrs. Watson?"

"No, dear, I don't. I never know anything about trains and things like that. Somebody always has to tell me, and put me on the cars. I shall trust to you and your brother to do that now. It's a great comfort to have a gentleman to see to things for you."

A gentleman! Poor Philly!

Mr. Dayton now came back to them. It was lucky that he knew the station and was used to the ways of railroads, for it appeared that Mrs. Watson had made no arrangements whatever for her journey, but had blindly devolved the care of herself and her belongings on her "young friends," as she called Clover and Phil. She had no sleeping section secured and no tickets, and they had to be procured at the last moment and in such a scramble that the last of her parcels was handed on to the platform by a porter, at full run, after the train was in motion. She was not at all flurried by the commotion, though others were, and blandly repeated that she knew from the beginning that all would be right as soon as Miss Carr and her brother arrived.

Mrs. Dayton had sent a courteous invitation to the old lady to come to Car Forty-seven for tea, but Mrs. Watson did not at all like being left alone meantime, and held fast to Clover when the others moved to go.

"I'm used to being a good deal looked after," she explained. "All the family know my ways, and they never do let me be alone much. I'm taken faint sometimes; and the doctor says it's my heart or something that's the cause of it, so my daughter she—You ain't going, my dear, are you?"

"I must look after my brother," said poor Clover; "he's been ill, you know, and this is the time for his medicine."

"Dear me! is he ill?" said Mrs. Watson, in an aggrieved tone. "I wasn't prepared for that. You'll have your hands pretty full with him and me both, won't you?—for though I'm well enough just now, there's no knowing what a day may bring forth, and you're all I have to depend upon. You're sure you must go? It seems as if your sister—Mrs. Worthing, is that the name?—might see to the medicine, and give you a little freedom. Don't let your brother be too exacting, dear. It is the worst thing for a young man. I'll sit here a little while, and then I'll—The conductor will help me, I suppose, or perhaps that gentleman might—I hate to be left by myself."

These were the last words which Clover heard as she escaped. She entered Car Forty-seven with such a rueful and disgusted countenance that everybody burst out laughing.

"What is the matter, Miss Clover?" asked Mr. Dayton. "Has your old lady left something after all?"

"Don't call her my old lady! I'm supposed to be her young lady, under her charge," said Clover, trying to smile. But the moment she got Katy to herself, she burst out with,—

"My dear, what am I going to do? It's really too dreadful. Instead of some one to help me, which is what papa meant, Mrs. Watson seems to depend on me to take all the care of her; and she says she has fainting fits and disease of the heart! How can I take care of her? Phil needs me all the time, and a great deal more than she does; I don't see how I can."

"You can't, of course. You are here to take care of Phil; and it is out of the question that you should have another person to look after. But I think you must mistake Mrs. Watson, Clovy. I know that Mrs. Hall wrote plainly about Phil's illness, for she showed me the letter."

"Just wait till you hear her talk," cried the exasperated Clover. "You will find that I didn't mistake her at all. Oh, why did Mrs. Hall interfere? It would all seem so easy in comparison—so perfectly easy—if only Philly and I were alone together."

Katy thought that Clover was fretted and disposed to exaggerate; but after Mrs. Watson joined them a little later, she changed her opinion. The old lady was an inveterate talker, and her habit of only half finishing her sentences made it difficult to follow the meanderings of her rambling discourse. It turned largely on her daughter, Mrs. Phillips, her husband, children, house, furniture, habits, tastes, and the Phillips connection generally.

"She's the only one I've got," she informed Mrs. Dayton; "so of course she's all-important to me. Jane Phillips—that's Henry's youngest sister—often says that really of all the women she ever knew Ellen is the most—And there's plenty to do always, of course, with three children and such a large elegant house and company coming all the—It's lucky that there's plenty to do with. Henry's very liberal. He likes to have things nice, so Ellen she—Why, when I was packing up to come away he brought me that repousse fruit-knife there in my bag—Oh, it's in my other bag! Never mind; I'll show it to you some other time—solid silver, you know. Bigelow and Kennard—their things always good, though expensive; and my son-in-law he said, 'You're going to a fruit country, and—' Mrs. Peters doesn't think there is so much fruit, though. All sent on from California, as I wrote,—and I guess Ellen and Henry were surprised to hear it."

Katy held serious counsel with herself that night as to what she should do about this extraordinary "guide, philosopher, and friend" whom the Fates had provided for Clover. She saw that her father, from very over-anxiety, had made a mistake, and complicated Clover's inevitable cares with a most undesirable companion, who would add to rather than relieve them. She could not decide what was best to do; and in fact the time was short for doing anything, for the next evening would bring them to Denver, and poor Clover must be left to face the situation by herself as best she might.

Katy finally concluded to write her father plainly how things stood, and beg him to set Clover's mind quite at rest as to any responsibility for Mrs. Watson, and also to have a talk with that lady herself, and explain matters as clearly as she could. It seemed all that was in her power.

Next day the party woke to a wonderful sense of lightness and exhilaration which no one could account for till the conductor told them that the apparently level plain over which they were speeding was more than four thousand feet above the sea. It seemed impossible to believe it. Hour by hour they climbed; but the climb was imperceptible. Now four thousand six hundred feet of elevation was reported, now four thousand eight hundred, at last above five thousand; and still there seemed about them nothing but a vast expanse of flat levels,—the table-lands of Nebraska. There was little that was beautiful in the landscape, which was principally made up of wide reaches of sand, dotted with cactus and grease-wood and with the droll cone-shaped burrows of the prairie-dogs, who could be seen gravely sitting on the roofs of their houses, or turning sudden somersaults in at the holes on top as the train whizzed by. They passed and repassed long links of a broad shallow river which the maps showed to be the Platte, and which seemed to be made of two-thirds sand to one-third water. Now and again mounted horsemen appeared in the distance whom Mr. Dayton said were "cow-boys;" but no cows were visible, and the rapidly moving figures were neither as picturesque nor as formidable as they had expected them to be.

Flowers were still abundant, and their splendid masses gave the charm of color to the rather arid landscape. Soon after noon dim blue outlines came into view, which grew rapidly bolder and more distinct, and revealed themselves as the Rocky Mountains,—the "backbone of the American Continent," of which we have all heard so much in geographies and the newspapers. It was delightful, in spite of dust and glare, to sit with that sweep of magnificent air rushing into their lungs, and watch the great ranges grow and grow and deepen in hue, till they seemed close at hand. To Katy they were like enchanted land. Somewhere on the other side of them, on the dim Pacific coast, her husband was waiting for her to come, and the wheels seemed to revolve with a regular rhythmic beat to the cadence of the old Scotch song,—

"And will I see his face again; And will I hear him speak?"

But to Clover the wheels sang something less jubilant, and she studied the mountains on her little travelling-map, and measured their distance from Burnet with a sigh. They were the walls of what seemed to her a sort of prison, as she realized that presently she should be left alone among them, Katy and Polly gone, and these new friends whom she had learned to like so much,—left alone with Phil and, what was worse, with Mrs. Watson! There was a comic side to the latter situation, undoubtedly, but at the moment she could not enjoy it.

Katy carried out her intention. She made a long call on Mrs. Watson in her section, and listened patiently to her bemoanings over the noise of the car which had kept her from sleeping; the "lady in gray over there" who had taken such a long time to dress in the morning that she—Mrs. Watson—could not get into the toilet-room at the precise moment that she wished; the newspaper boy who would not let her "just glance over" the Denver "Republican" unless she bought and paid for it ("and I only wanted to see the Washington news, my dear, and something about a tin wedding in East Dedham. My mother came from there, and I recognized one of the names and—But he took it away quite rudely; and when I complained, the conductor wouldn't attend to what I—"); and the bad piece of beefsteak which had been brought for her breakfast at the eating-station. Katy soothed and comforted to the best of her ability, and then plunged into her subject, explaining Phil's very delicate condition and the necessity for constant watchfulness on the part of Clover, and saying most distinctly and in the plainest of English that Mrs. Watson must not expect Clover to take care of her too. The old lady was not in the least offended; but her replies were so incoherent that Katy was not sure that she understood the matter any better for the explanation.

"Certainly, my dear, certainly. Your brother doesn't appear so very sick; but he must be looked after, of course. Boys always ought to be. I'll remind your sister if she seems to be forgetting anything. I hope I shall keep well myself, so as not to be a worry to her. And we can take little excursions together, I dare say—Girls always like to go, and of course an older person—Oh, no, your brother won't need her so much as you think. He seems pretty strong to me, and—You mustn't worry about them, Mrs. Worthing—We shall all get on very well, I'm sure, provided I don't break down, and I guess I sha'n't, though they say almost every one does in this air. Why, we shall be as high up as the top of Mount Washington."

Katy went back to Forty-seven in despair, to comfort herself with a long confidential chat with Clover in which she exhorted her not to let herself be imposed upon.

"Be good to her, and make her as happy as you can, but don't feel bound to wait on her, and run her errands. I am sure papa would not wish it; and it will half kill you if you attempt it. Phil, till he gets stronger, is all you can manage. You not only have to nurse him, you know, but to keep him happy. It's so bad for him to mope. You want all your time to read with him, and take walks and drives; that is, if there are any carriages at St. Helen's. Don't let Mrs. Watson seize upon you, Clover. I'm awfully afraid that she means to, and I can see that she is a real old woman of the sea. Once she gets on your back you will never be able to throw her off."

"She shall not get on my back," said Clover, straightening her small figure; "but doesn't it seem unnecessary that I should have an old woman of the sea to grapple with as well as Phil?"

"Provoking things are apt to seem unnecessary, I fancy. You mustn't let yourself get worried, dear Clovy. The old lady means kindly enough, I think, only she's naturally tiresome, and has become helpless from habit. Be nice to her, but hold your own. Self-preservation is the first law of Nature."

Just at dusk the train reached Denver, and the dreaded moment of parting came. There were kisses and tearful good-byes, but not much time was allowed for either. The last glimpse that Clover had of Katy was as the train moved away, when she put her head far out of the window of Car Forty-seven to kiss her hand once more, and call back, in a tone oracular and solemn enough to suit King Charles the First, his own admonitory word, "Remember!"



CHAPTER VI.

ST. HELEN'S.

Never in her life had Clover felt so small and incompetent and so very, very young as when the train with Car Forty-seven attached vanished from sight, and left her on the platform of the Denver station with her two companions. There they stood, Phil on one side tired and drooping, Mrs. Watson on the other blinking anxiously about, both evidently depending on her for guidance and direction. For one moment a sort of pale consternation swept over her. Then the sense of the inevitable and the nobler sense of responsibility came to her aid. She rallied herself; the color returned to her cheeks, and she said bravely to Mrs. Watson,—

"Now, if you and Phil will just sit down on that settee over there and make yourselves comfortable, I will find out about the trains for St. Helen's, and where we had better go for the night."

Mrs. Watson and Phil seated themselves accordingly, and Clover stood for a moment considering what she should do. Outside was a wilderness of tracks up and down which trains were puffing, in obedience, doubtless, to some law understood by themselves, but which looked to the uninitiated like the direst confusion. Inside the station the scene was equally confused. Travellers just arrived and just going away were rushing in and out; porters and baggage-agents with their hands full hurried to and fro. No one seemed at leisure to answer a question or even to listen to one.

Just then she caught sight of a shrewd, yet good-natured face looking at her from the window of the ticket-office; and without hesitation she went up to the enclosure. It was the ticket-agent whose eye she had caught. He was at liberty at the moment, and his answers to her inquiries, though brief, were polite and kind. People generally did soften to Clover. There was such an odd and pretty contrast between her girlish appealing look and her dignified little manner, like a child trying to be stately but only succeeding in being primly sweet.

The next train for St. Helen's left at nine in the morning, it seemed, and the ticket-agent recommended the Sherman House as a hotel where they would be very comfortable for the night.

"The omnibus is just outside," he said encouragingly. "You'll find it a first-class house,—best there is west of Chicago. From the East? Just so. You've not seen our opera-house yet, I suppose. Denver folks are rather proud of it. Biggest in the country except the new one in New York. Hope you'll find time to visit it."

"I should like to," said Clover; "but we are here for only one night. My brother's been ill, and we are going directly on to St. Helen's. I'm very much obliged to you."

Her look of pretty honest gratitude seemed to touch the heart of the ticket-man. He opened the door of his fastness, and came out—actually came out!—and with a long shrill whistle summoned a porter whom he addressed as, "Here, you Pat," and bade, "Take this lady's things, and put them into the 'bus for the Sherman; look sharp now, and see that she's all right." Then to Clover,—

"You'll find it very comfortable at the Sherman, Miss, and I hope you'll have a good night. If you'll come to me in the morning, I'll explain about the baggage transfer."

Clover thanked this obliging being again, and rejoined her party, who were patiently sitting where she had left them.

"Dear me!" said Mrs. Watson as the omnibus rolled off, "I had no idea that Denver was such a large place. Street cars too! Well, I declare!"

"And what nice shops!" said Clover, equally surprised.

Her ideas had been rather vague as to what was to be expected in the close neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains; but she knew that Denver had only existed a few years, and was prepared to find everything looking rough and unfinished.

"Why, they have restaurants here and jewellers' shops!" she cried. "Look, Phil, what a nice grocery! We needn't have packed all those oatmeal biscuits if only we had known. And electric lights! How wonderful! But of course St. Helen's is quite different."

Their amazement increased when they reached the hotel, and were taken in a large dining-room to order dinner from a bill of fare which seemed to include every known luxury, from Oregon salmon and Lake Superior white-fish to frozen sherbets and California peaches and apricots. But wonderment yielded to fatigue, and again as Clover fell asleep she was conscious of a deep depression. What had she undertaken to do? How could she do it?

But a night of sound sleep followed by such a morning of unclouded brilliance as is seldom seen east of Colorado banished these misgivings. Courage rose under the stimulus of such air and sunshine.

"I must just live for each day as it comes," said little Clover to herself, "do my best as things turn up, keep Phil happy, and satisfy Mrs. Watson,—if I can,—and not worry about to-morrows or yesterdays. That is the only safe way, and I won't forget if I can help it."

With these wise resolves she ran down stairs, looking so blithe and bright that Phil cheered at the sight of her, and lost the long morning face he had got up with, while even Mrs. Watson caught the contagion, and became fairly hopeful and content. A little leaven of good-will and good heart in one often avails to lighten the heaviness of many.

The distance between Denver and St. Helen's is less than a hundred miles, but as the railroad has to climb and cross a range of hills between two and three thousand feet high, the journey occupies several hours. As the train gradually rose higher and higher, the travellers began to get wide views, first of the magnificent panorama of mountains which lies to the northwest of Denver, sixty miles away, with Long's Peak in the middle, and after crossing the crest of the "Divide," where a blue little lake rimmed with wild-flowers sparkled in the sun, of the more southern ranges. After a while they found themselves running parallel to a mountain chain of strange and beautiful forms, green almost to the top, and intersected with deep ravines and cliffs which the conductor informed them were "canyons." They seemed quite near at hand, for their bases sank into low rounded hills covered with woods, these melted into undulating table-lands, and those again into a narrow strip of park-like plain across which ran the track. Flowers innumerable grew on this plain, mixed with grass of a tawny brown-green. There were cactuses, red and yellow, scarlet and white gillias, tall spikes of yucca in full bloom, and masses of a superb white poppy with an orange-brown centre, whose blue-green foliage was prickly like that of the thistle. Here and there on the higher uplands appeared strange rock shapes of red and pink and pale yellow, which looked like castles with towers and pinnacles, or like primitive fortifications. Clover thought it all strangely beautiful, but Mrs. Watson found fault with it as "queer."

"It looks unnatural, somehow," she objected; "not a bit like the East. Red never was a favorite color of mine. Ellen had a magenta bonnet once, and it always worried—But Henry liked it, so of course—People can't see things the same way. Now the green hat she had winter before last was—Don't you think those mountains are dreadfully bright and distinct? I don't like such high-colored rocks. Even the green looks red, somehow. I like soft, hazy mountains like Blue Hill and Wachusett. Ellen spent a summer up at Princeton once. It was when little Cynthia had diphtheria—she's named after me, you know, and Henry he thought—But I don't like the staring kind like these; and somehow those buildings, which the conductor says are not buildings but rocks, make my flesh creep."

"They'd be scrumptious places to repel attacks of Indians from," observed Phil; "two or three scouts with breech-loaders up on that scarlet wall there could keep off a hundred Piutes."

"I don't feel that way a bit," Clover was saying to Mrs. Watson. "I like the color, it's so rich; and I think the mountains are perfectly beautiful. If St. Helen's is like this I am going to like it, I know."

St. Helen's, when they reached it, proved to be very much "like this," only more so, as Phil remarked. The little settlement was built on a low plateau facing the mountains, and here the plain narrowed, and the beautiful range, seen through the clear atmosphere, seemed only a mile or two away, though in reality it was eight or ten. To the east the plain widened again into great upland sweeps like the Kentish Downs, with here and there a belt of black woodland, and here and there a line of low bluffs. Viewed from a height, with the cloud-shadows sweeping across it, it had the extent and splendor of the sea, and looked very much like it.

The town, seen from below, seemed a larger place than Clover had expected, and again she felt the creeping, nervous feeling come over her. But before the train had fairly stopped, a brisk, active little man jumped on board, and walking into the car, began to look about him with keen, observant eyes. After one sweeping glance, he came straight to where Clover was collecting her bags and parcels, held out his hand, and said in a pleasant voice, "I think this must be Miss Carr."

"I am Dr. Hope," he went on; "your father telegraphed when you were to leave Chicago, and I have come down to two or three trains in the hope of meeting you."

"Have you, indeed?" said Clover, with a rush of relief. "How very kind of you! And so papa telegraphed! I never thought of that. Phil, here is Dr. Hope, papa's friend; Dr. Hope, Mrs. Watson."

"This is really a very agreeable attention,—your coming to meet us," said Mrs. Watson; "a very agreeable attention indeed. Well, I shall write Ellen—that's my daughter, Mrs. Phillips, you know—that before we had got out of the cars, a gentleman—And though I've always been in the habit of going about a good deal, it's always been in the East, of course, and things are—What are we going to do first, Dr. Hope? Miss Carr has a great deal of energy for a girl, but naturally—I suppose there's an hotel at St. Helen's. Ellen is rather particular where I stay. 'At your age, Mother, you must be made comfortable, whatever it costs,' she says; and so I—An only daughter, you know—but you'll attend to all those things for us now, Doctor."

"There's quite a good hotel," said Dr. Hope, his eyes twinkling a little; "I'll show it to you as we drive up. You'll find it very comfortable if you prefer to go there. But for these young people I've taken rooms at a boarding-house, a quieter and less expensive place. I thought it was what your father would prefer," he added in a lower tone to Clover.

"I am sure he would," she replied; but Mrs. Watson broke in,—

"Oh, I shall go wherever Miss Carr goes. She's under my care, you know—Though at the same time I must say that in the long run I have generally found that the most expensive places turn out the cheapest. As Ellen often says, get the best and—What do they charge at this hotel that you speak of, Dr. Hope?"

"The Shoshone House? About twenty-five dollars a week, I think, if you make a permanent arrangement."

"That is a good deal," remarked Mrs. Watson, meditatively, while Clover hastened to say,—

"It is a great deal more than Phil and I can spend, Dr. Hope; I am glad you have chosen the other place for us."

"I suppose it is better," admitted Mm Watson; but when they gained the top of the hill, and a picturesque, many-gabled, many-balconied structure was pointed out as the Shoshone, her regrets returned, and she began again to murmur that very often the most expensive places turned out the cheapest in the end, and that it stood to reason that they must be the best. Dr. Hope rather encouraged this view, and proposed that she should stop and look at some rooms; but no, she could not desert her young charges and would go on, though at the same time she must say that her opinion as an older person who had seen more of the world was—She was used to being consulted. Why, Addy Phillips wouldn't order that crushed strawberry bengaline of hers till Mrs. Watson saw the sample, and—But girls had their own ideas, and were bound to carry them out, Ellen always said so, and for her part she knew her duty and meant to do it!

Dr. Hope flashed one rapid, comical look at Clover. Western life sharpens the wits, if it does nothing else, and Westerners as a general thing become pretty good judges of character. It had not taken ten minutes for the keen-witted little doctor to fathom the peculiarities of Clover's "chaperone," and he would most willingly have planted her in the congenial soil of the Shoshone House, which would have provided a wider field for her restlessness and self-occupation, and many more people to listen to her narratives and sympathize with her complaints. But it was no use. She was resolved to abide by the fortunes of her "young friends."

While this discussion was proceeding, the carriage had been rolling down a wide street running along the edge of the plateau, opposite the mountain range. Pretty houses stood on either side in green, shaded door-yards, with roses and vine-hung piazzas and nicely-cut grass.

"Why, it looks like a New England town," said Clover, amazed; "I thought there were no trees here."

"Yes, I know," said Dr. Hope smiling. "You came, like most Eastern people, prepared to find us sitting in the middle of a sandy waste, on cactus pincushions, picking our teeth with bowie-knives, and with no neighbors but Indians and grizzly bears. Well; sixteen years ago we could have filled the bill pretty well. Then there was not a single house in St. Helen's,—not even a tent, and not one of the trees that you see here had been planted. Now we have three railroads meeting at our depot, a population of nearly seven thousand, electric lights, telephones, a good opera-house, a system of works which brings first-rate spring water into the town from six miles away,—in short, pretty much all the modern conveniences."

"But what has made the place grow so fast?" asked Clover.

"If I may be allowed a professional pun, it is built up on coughings. It is a town for invalids. Half the people here came out for the benefit of their lungs."

"Isn't that rather depressing?"

"It would be more so if most of them did not look so well that no one would suspect them of being ill. Here we are."

Clover looked out eagerly. There was nothing picturesque about the house at whose gate the carriage had stopped. It was a large shabby structure, with a piazza above as well as below, and on these piazzas various people were sitting who looked unmistakably ill. The front of the house, however, commanded the fine mountain view.

"You see," explained Dr. Hope, drawing Clover aside, "boarding-places that are both comfortable and reasonable are rather scarce at St. Helen's. I know all about the table here and the drainage; and the view is desirable, and Mrs. Marsh, who keeps the house, is one of the best women we have. She's from down your way too,—Barnstable, Mass., I think."

Clover privately wondered how Barnstable, Mass., could be classed as "down" the same way with Burnet, not having learned as yet that to the soaring Western mind that insignificant fraction of the whole country known as "the East," means anywhere from Maine to Michigan, and that such trivial geographical differences as exist between the different sections seem scarcely worth consideration when compared with the vast spaces which lie beyond toward the setting sun. But perhaps Dr. Hope was only trying to tease her, for he twinkled amusedly at her puzzled face as he went on,—

"I think you can make yourselves comfortable here. It was the best I could do. But your old lady would be much better suited at the Shoshone, and I wish she'd go there."

Clover could not help laughing. "I wish that people wouldn't persist in calling Mrs. Watson my old lady," she thought.

Mrs. Marsh, a pleasant-looking person, came to meet them as they entered. She showed Clover and Phil their rooms, which had been secured for them, and then carried Mrs. Watson off to look at another which she could have if she liked.

The rooms were on the third floor. A big front one for Phil, with a sunny south window and two others looking towards the west and the mountains, and, opening from it, a smaller room for Clover.

"Your brother ought to live in fresh air both in doors and out," said Dr. Hope; "and I thought this large room would answer as a sort of sitting place for both of you."

"It's ever so nice; and we are both more obliged to you than we can say," replied Clover, holding out her hand as the doctor rose to go. He gave a pleased little laugh as he shook it.

"That's all right," he said. "I owe your father's children any good turn in my power, for he was a good friend to me when I was a poor boy just beginning, and needed friends. That's my house with the red roof, Miss Clover. You see how near it is; and please remember that besides the care of this boy here, I'm in charge of you too, and have the inside track of the rest of the friends you are going to make in Colorado. I expect to be called on whenever you want anything, or feel lonesome, or are at a loss in any way. My wife is coming to see you as soon as you have had your dinner and got settled a little. She sent those to you," indicating a vase on the table, filled with flowers. They were of a sort which Clover had never seen before,—deep cup-shaped blossoms of beautiful pale purple and white.

"Oh, what are they?" she called after the doctor.

"Anemones," he answered, and was gone.

"What a dear, nice, kind man!" cried Clover. "Isn't it delightful to have a friend right off who knows papa, and does things for us because we are papa's children? You like him, don't you, Phil; and don't you like your room?"

"Yes; only it doesn't seem fair that I should have the largest."

"Oh, yes; it is perfectly fair. I never shall want to be in mine except when I am dressing or asleep. I shall sit here with you all the time; and isn't it lovely that we have those enchanting mountains just before our eyes? I never saw anything in my life that I liked so much as I do that one."

It was Cheyenne Mountain at which she pointed, the last of the chain, and set a little apart, as it were, from the others. There is as much difference between mountains as between people, as mountain-lovers know, and like people they present characters and individualities of their own. The noble lines of Mount Cheyenne are full of a strange dignity; but it is dignity mixed with an indefinable charm. The canyons nestle about its base, as children at a parent's knee; its cedar forests clothe it like drapery; it lifts its head to the dawn and the sunset; and the sun seems to love it best of all, and lies longer on it than on the other peaks.

Clover did not analyze her impressions, but she fell in love with it at first sight, and loved it better and better all the time that she stayed at St. Helen's. "Dr. Hope and Mount Cheyenne were our first friends in the place," she used to say in after-days.

"How nice it is to be by ourselves!" said Phil, as he lay comfortably on the sofa watching Clover unpack. "I get so tired of being all the time with people. Dear me! the room looks quite homelike already."

Clover had spread a pretty towel over the bare table, laid some books and her writing-case upon it, and was now pinning up a photograph over the mantel-piece.

"We'll make it nice by-and-by," she said cheerfully; "and now that I've tidied up a little, I think I'll go and see what has become of Mrs. Watson. She'll think I have quite forgotten her. You'll lie quiet and rest till dinner, won't you?"

"Yes," said Phil, who looked very sleepy; "I'm all right for an hour to come. Don't hurry back if the ancient female wants you."

Clover spread a shawl over him before she went and shut one of the windows.



"We won't have you catching cold the very first morning," she said. "That would be a bad story to send back to papa."

She found Mrs. Watson in very low spirits about her room.

"It's not that it's small," she said. "I don't need a very big room; but I don't like being poked away at the back so. I've always had a front room all my life. And at Ellen's in the summer, I have a corner chamber, and see the sea and everything—It's an elegant room, solid black walnut with marble tops, and—Lighthouses too; I have three of them in view, and they are really company for me on dark nights. I don't want to be fussy, but really to look out on nothing but a side yard with some trees—and they aren't elms or anything that I'm used to, but a new kind. There's a thing out there, too, that I never saw before, which looks like one of the giant ants' nests of Africa in 'Morse's Geography' that I used to read about when I was—It makes me really nervous."

Clover went to the window to look at the mysterious object. It was a cone-shaped thing of white unburned clay, whose use she could not guess. She found later that it was a receptacle for ashes.

"I suppose your rooms are front ones?" went on Mrs. Watson, querulously.

"Mine isn't. It's quite a little one at the side. I think it must be just under this. Phil's is in front, and is a nice large one with a view of the mountains. I wish there were one just like it for you. The doctor says that it's very important for him to have a great deal of air in his room."

"Doctors always say that; and of course Dr. Hope, being a friend of yours and all—It's quite natural he should give you the preference. Though the Phillips's are accustomed—but there, it's no use; only, as I tell Ellen, Boston is the place for me, where my family is known, and people realize what I'm used to."

"I'm so sorry," Clover said again. "Perhaps somebody will go away, and Mrs. Marsh have a front room for you before long."

"She did say that she might. I suppose she thinks some of her boarders will be dying off. In fact, there is one—that tall man in gray in the reclining-chair—who didn't seem to me likely to last long. Well, we will hope for the best. I'm not one who likes to make difficulties."

This prospect, together with dinner, which was presently announced, raised Mrs. Watson's spirits a little, and Clover left her in the parlor, exchanging experiences and discussing symptoms with some ladies who had sat opposite them at table. Mrs. Hope came for a call; a pretty little woman, as friendly and kind as her husband. Then Clover and Phil went out for a stroll about the town. Their wonder increased at every turn; that a place so well equipped and complete in its appointments could have been created out of nothing in fifteen years was a marvel!

After two or three turns they found themselves among shops, whose plate-glass windows revealed all manner of wares,—confectionery, new books, pretty glass and china, bonnets of the latest fashion. One or two large pharmacies glittered with jars—purple and otherwise—enough to tempt any number of Rosamonds. Handsome carriages drawn by fine horses rolled past them, with well-dressed people inside. In short, St. Helen's was exactly like a thriving Eastern town of double its size, with the difference that here a great many more people seemed to ride than to drive. Some one cantered past every moment,—a lady alone, two or three girls together, or a party of rough-looking men in long boots, or a single ranchman sitting loose in his stirrups, and swinging a stock whip.

Clover and Phil were standing on a corner, looking at some "Rocky Mountain Curiosities" displayed for sale,—minerals, Pueblo pottery, stuffed animals, and Indian blankets; and Phil had just commented on the beauty of a black horse which was tied to a post close by, when its rider emerged from a shop, and prepared to mount.

He was a rather good-looking young fellow, sunburnt and not very tall, but with a lithe active figure, red-brown eyes and a long mustache of tawny chestnut. He wore spurs and a broad-brimmed sombrero, and carried in his hand a whip which seemed two-thirds lash. As he put his foot into the stirrup, he turned for another look at Clover, whom he had rather stared at while passing, and then changing his intention, took it out again, and came toward them.

"I beg your pardon," he said; "but aren't you—isn't it—Clover Carr?"

"Yes," said Clover, wondering, but still without the least notion as to whom the stranger might be.

"You've forgotten me?" went on the young man, with a smile which made his face very bright. "That's rather hard too; for I knew you at once. I suppose I'm a good deal changed, though, and perhaps I shouldn't have made you out except for your eyes; they're just the same. Why, Clover, I'm your cousin, Clarence Page!"

"Clarence Page!" cried Clover, joyfully; "not really! Why, Clarence, I never should have known you in the world, and I can't think how you came to know me. I was only fourteen when I saw you last, and you were quite a little boy. What good luck that we should meet, and on our first day too! Some one wrote that you were in Colorado, but I had no idea that you lived at St. Helen's."

"I don't; not much. I'm living on a ranch out that way," jerking his elbow toward the northwest, "but I ride in often to get the mail. Have you just come? You said the first day."

"Yes; we only got here this morning. And this is my brother Phil. Don't you recollect how I used to tell you about him at Ashburn?"

"I should think you did," shaking hands cordially; "she used to talk about you all the time, so that I felt intimately acquainted with all the family. Well, I call this first rate luck. It's two years since I saw any one from home."

"Home?"

"Well; the East, you know. It all seems like home when you're out here. And I mean any one that I know, of course. People from the East come out all the while. They are as thick as bumblebees at St. Helen's, but they don't amount to much unless you know them. Have you seen anything of mother and Lilly since they got back from Europe, Clover?"

"No, indeed. I haven't seen them since we left Hillsover. Katy has, though. She met them in Nice when she was there, and they sent her a wedding present. You knew that she was married, didn't you?"

"Yes, I got her cards. Pa sent them. He writes oftener than the others do; and he came out once and stayed a month on the ranch with me. That was while mother was in Europe. Where are you stopping? The Shoshone, I suppose."

"No, at a quieter place,—Mrs. Marsh's, on the same street."

"Oh, I know Mother Marsh. I went there when I first came out, and had caught the mountain fever, and she was ever so kind to me. I'm glad you are there. She's a nice woman."

"How far away is your ranch?"

"About sixteen miles. Oh, I say, Clover, you and Phil must come out and stay with us sometime this summer. We'll have a round-up for you if you will."

"What is a 'round-up' and who is 'us'?" said Clover, smiling.

"Well, a round-up is a kind of general muster of the stock. All the animals are driven in and counted, and the young ones branded. It's pretty exciting sometimes, I can tell you, for the cattle get wild, and it's all we can do to manage them. You should see some of our boys ride; it's splendid, and there's one half-breed that's the best hand with the lasso I ever saw. Phil will like it, I know. And 'us' is me and my partner."

"Have you a partner?"

"Yes, two, in fact; but one of them lives in New Mexico just now, so he does not count. That's Bert Talcott. He's a New York fellow. The other's English, a Devonshire man. Geoff Templestowe is his name."

"Is he nice?"

"You can just bet your pile that he is," said Clarence, who seemed to have assimilated Western slang with the rest of the West. "Wait till I bring him to see you. We'll come in on purpose some day soon. Well, I must be going. Good-by, Clover; good-by, Phil. It's awfully jolly to have you here."

"I never should have guessed who it was," remarked Clover, as they watched the active figure canter down the street and turn for a last flourish of the hat. "He was the roughest, scrubbiest boy when we last met. What a fine-looking fellow he has grown to be, and how well he rides!"

"No wonder; a fellow who can have a horse whenever he has a mind to," said Phil, enviously. "Life on a ranch must be great fun, I think."

"Yes; in one way, but pretty rough and lonely too, sometimes. It will be nice to go out and see Clarence's, if we can get some lady to go with us, won't it?"

"Well, just don't let it be Mrs. Watson, whoever else it is. She would spoil it all if she went."

"Now, Philly, don't. We're supposed to be leaning on her for support."

"Oh, come now, lean on that old thing! Why she couldn't support a postage stamp standing edgewise, as the man says in the play. Do you suppose I don't know how you have to look out for her and do everything? She's not a bit of use."

"Yes; but you and I have got to be polite to her, Philly. We mustn't forget that."

"Oh, I'll be polite enough, if she will just leave us alone," retorted Phil.

Promising!



CHAPTER VII.

MAKING ACQUAINTANCE.

Phil was better than his word. He was never uncivil to Mrs. Watson, and his distant manners, which really signified distaste, were set down by that lady to boyish shyness.

"They often are like that when they are young," she told Clover; "but they get bravely over it after a while. He'll outgrow it, dear, and you mustn't let it worry you a bit."

Meanwhile, Mrs. Watson's own flow of conversation was so ample that there was never any danger of awkward silences when she was present, which was a comfort. She had taken Clover into high favor now, and Clover deserved it,—for though she protected herself against encroachments, and resolutely kept the greater part of her time free for Phil, she was always considerate, and sweet in manner to the older lady, and she found spare half-hours every day in which to sit and go out with her, so that she should not feel neglected. Mrs. Watson grew quite fond of her "young friend," though she stood a little in awe of her too, and was disposed to be jealous if any one showed more attention to Clover than to herself.

An early outburst of this feeling came on the third day after their arrival, when Mrs. Hope asked Phil and Clover to dinner, and did not ask Mrs. Watson. She had discussed the point with her husband, but the doctor "jumped on" the idea forcibly, and protested that if that old thing was to come too, he would "have a consultation in Pueblo, and be off in the five thirty train, sure as fate."

"It's not that I care," Mrs. Watson assured Clover plaintively. "I've had so much done for me all my life that of course—But I do like to be properly treated. It isn't as if I were just anybody. I don't suppose Mrs. Hope knows much about Boston society anyway, but still—And I should think a girl from South Framingham (didn't you say she was from South Framingham?) would at least know who the Abraham Peabodys are, and they're Henry's—But I don't imagine she was much of anybody before she was married; and out here it's all hail fellow and well met, they say, though in that case I don't see—Well, well, it's no matter, only it seems queer to me; and I think you'd better drop a hint about it when you're there, and just explain that my daughter lives next door to the Lieutenant-Governor when she is in the country, and opposite the Assistant-Bishop in town, and has one of the Harvard Overseers for a near neighbor, and is distantly related to the Reveres! You'd think even a South Framingham girl must know about the lantern and the Old South, and how much they've always been respected at home."

Clover pacified her as well as she could, by assurances that it was not a dinner-party, and they were only asked to meet one girl whom Mrs. Hope wanted her to know.

"If it were a large affair, I am sure you would have been asked too," she said, and so left her "old woman of the sea" partly consoled.

It was the most lovely evening possible, as Clover and Phil walked down the street toward Dr. Hope's. Soft shadows lay over the lower spurs of the ranges. The canyons looked black and deep, but the peaks still glittered in rosy light. The mesa was in shadow, but the nearer plain lay in full sunshine, hot and yellow, and the west wind was full of mountain fragrance.

Phil gave little skips as he went along. Already he seemed like a different boy. All the droop and languor had gone, and given place to an exhilaration which half frightened Clover, who had constant trouble in keeping him from doing things which she knew to be imprudent. Dr. Hope had warned her that invalids often harmed themselves by over-exertion under the first stimulus of the high air.

"Why, how queer!" she exclaimed, stopping suddenly before one of the pretty places just above Mrs. Marsh's boarding-house.

"What?"

"Don't you see? That yard! When we came by here yesterday it was all green grass and rose-bushes, and girls were playing croquet; and now, look, it's a pond!"

Sure enough! There were the rose-bushes still, and the croquet arches; but they were standing, so to speak, up to their knees in pools of water, which seemed several inches deep, and covered the whole place, with the exception of the flagged walks which ran from the gates to the front and side doors of the house. Clover noticed now, for the first time, that these walks were several inches higher than the grass-beds on either side. She wondered if they were made so on purpose, and resolved to notice if the next place had the same arrangement.

But as they reached the next place and the next, lo! the phenomenon was repeated and Dr. Hope's lawn too was in the same condition,—everything was overlaid with water. They began to suspect what it must mean, and Mrs. Hope confirmed the suspicion. It was irrigation day in Mountain Avenue, it seemed. Every street in the town had its appointed period when the invaluable water, brought from a long distance for the purpose, was "laid on" and kept at a certain depth for a prescribed number of hours.

"We owe our grass and shrubs and flower-beds entirely to this arrangement," Mrs. Hope told them. "Nothing could live through our dry summers if we did not have the irrigating system."

"Are the summers so dry?" asked Clover. "It seems to me that we have had a thunder-storm almost every day since we came."

"We do have a good many thunderstorms," Mrs. Hope admitted; "but we can't depend on them for the gardens."

"And did you ever hear such magnificent thunder?" asked Dr. Hope. "Colorado thunder beats the world."

"Wait till you see our magnificent Colorado hail," put in Mrs. Hope, wickedly. "That beats the world, too. It cuts our flowers to pieces, and sometimes kills the sheep on the plains. We are very proud of it. The doctor thinks everything in Colorado perfection."

"I have always pitied places which had to be irrigated," remarked Clover, with her eyes fixed on the little twin-lakes which yesterday were lawns. "But I begin to think I was mistaken. It's very superior, of course, to have rains; but then at the East we sometimes don't have rain when we want it, and the grass gets dreadfully yellow. Don't you remember, Phil, how hard Katy and I worked last summer to keep the geraniums and fuschias alive in that long drought? Now, if we had had water like this to come once a week, and make a nice deep pond for us, how different it would have been!"

"Oh, you must come out West for real comfort," said Dr. Hope. "The East is a dreadfully one-horse little place, anyhow."

"But you don't mean New York and Boston when you say 'one-horse little place,' surely?"

"Don't I?" said the undaunted doctor. "Wait till you see more of us out here."

"Here's Poppy, at last," cried Mrs. Hope, as a girl came hurriedly up the walk. "You're late, dear."

"Poppy," whose real name was Marian Chase, was the girl who had been asked to meet them. She was a tall, rosy creature, to whom Clover took an instant fancy, and seemed in perfect health; yet she told them that when she came out to Colorado three years before, she had travelled on a mattress, with a doctor and a trained nurse in attendance.

"Your brother will be as strong, or stronger than I at the end of a year," she said; "or if he doesn't get well as fast as he ought, you must take him up to the Ute Valley. That's where I made my first gain."

"Where is the valley?"

"Thirty miles away to the northwest,—up there among the mountains. It is a great deal higher than this, and such a lovely peaceful place. I hope you'll go there."

"We shall, of course, if Phil needs it; but I like St. Helen's so much that I would rather stay here if we can."

Dinner was now announced, and Mrs. Hope led the way into a pretty room hung with engravings and old plates after the modern fashion, where a white-spread table stood decorated with wild-flowers, candle-sticks with little red-shaded tapers, and a pyramid of plums and apricots. There was the usual succession of soup and fish and roast and salad which one looks for at a dinner on the sea-level, winding up with ice-cream of a highly civilized description, but Clover could scarcely eat for wondering how all these things had come there so soon, so very soon. It seemed like magic,—one minute the solemn peaks and passes, the prairie-dogs and the thorny plain, the next all these portieres and rugs and etchings and down pillows and pretty devices in glass and china, as if some enchanter's wand had tapped the wilderness, and hey, presto! modern civilization had sprung up like Jonah's gourd all in a minute, or like the palace which Aladdin summoned into being in a single night for the occupation of the Princess of China, by the rubbing of his wonderful lamp. And then, just as the fruit-plates were put on the table, came a call, and the doctor was out in the hall, "holloing" and conducting with some distant patient one of those mysterious telephonic conversations which to those who overhear seem all replies and no questions. It was most remarkable, and quite unlike her preconceived ideas of what was likely to take place at the base of the Rocky Mountains.

A pleasant evening followed. "Poppy" played delightfully on the piano; later came a rubber of whist. It was like home.

"Before these children go, let us settle about the drive," said Dr. Hope to his wife.

"Oh, yes! Miss Carr—"

"Oh, please, won't you call me Clover?"

"Indeed I will,—Clover, then,—we want to take you for a good long drive to-morrow, and show you something; but the trouble is, the doctor and I are at variance as to what the something shall be. I want you to see Odin's Garden; and the doctor insists that you ought to go to the Cheyenne canyons first, because those are his favorites. Now, which shall it be? We will leave it to you."

"But how can I choose? I don't know either of them. What a queer name,—Odin's Garden!"

"I'll tell you how to settle it," cried Marian Chase, whose nickname it seemed had been given her because when she first came to St. Helen's she wore a bunch of poppies in her hat. "Take them to Cheyenne to-morrow; and the next day—or Thursday—let me get up a picnic for Odin's Garden; just a few of our special cronies,—the Allans and the Blanchards and Mary Pelham and Will Amory. Will you, dear Mrs. Hope, and be our matron? That would be lovely."

Mrs. Hope consented, and Clover walked home as if treading on air. Was this the St. Helen's to which she had looked forward with so much dread,—this gay, delightful place, where such pleasant things happened, and people were so kind? How she wished that she could get at Katy and papa for five minutes—on a wishing carpet or something—to tell them how different everything was from what she had expected.

One thing only marred her anticipations for the morrow, which was the fear that Mrs. Watson might be hurt, and make a scene. Happily, Mrs. Hope's thoughts took the same direction; and by some occult process of influence, the use of which good wives understand, she prevailed on her refractory doctor to allow the old lady to be asked to join the party.

So early next morning came a very polite note; and it was proposed that Phil should ride the doctor's horse, and act as escort to Miss Chase, who was to go on horseback likewise. No proposal could have been more agreeable to Phil, who adored horses, and seldom had the chance to mount one; so every one was pleased, and Mrs. Watson preened her ancestral feathers with great satisfaction.

"You see, dear, how well it was to give that little hint about the Reveres and the Abraham Peabodys," she said. Clover felt dreadfully dishonest; but she dared not confess that she had forgotten all about the hint, still less that she had never meant to give one. "The better part of valor is discretion," she remembered; so she held her peace, though her cheeks glowed guiltily.

At three o'clock they set forth in a light roomy carriage,—not exactly a carryall, but of the carryall family,—with a pair of fast horses, Miss Chase and Phil cantering happily alongside, or before or behind, just as it happened. The sun was very hot; but there was a delicious breeze, and the dryness and elasticity of the air made the heat easy to bear.

The way lay across and down the southern slope of the plateau on which the town was built. Then they came to splendid fields of grain and "afalfa,"—a cereal quite new to them, with broad, very green leaves. The roadside was gay with flowers,—gillias and mountain balm; high pink and purple spikes, like foxgloves, which they were told were pentstemons; painters' brush, whose green tips seemed dipped in liquid vermilion, and masses of the splendid wild poppies. They crossed a foaming little river; and a sharp turn brought them into a narrower and wilder road, which ran straight toward the mountain side. This was overhung by trees, whose shade was grateful after the hot sun.

Narrower and narrower grew the road, more and more sharp the turns. They were at the entrance of a deep defile, up which the road wound and wound, following the links of the river, which they crossed and recrossed repeatedly. Such a wonderful and perfect little river, with water clear as air and cold as ice, flowing over a bed of smooth granite, here slipping noiselessly down long slopes of rock like thin films of glass, there deepening into pools of translucent blue-green like aqua-marine or beryl, again plunging down in mimic waterfalls, a sheet of iridescent foam. The sound of its rush and its ripple was like a laugh. Never was such happy water, Clover thought, as it curved and bent and swayed this way and that on its downward course as if moved by some merry, capricious instinct, like a child dancing as it goes. Regiments or great ferns grew along its banks, and immense thickets of wild roses of all shades, from deep Jacqueminot red to pale blush-white. Here and there rose a lonely spike of yucca, and in the little ravines to right and left grew in the crevices of the rocks clumps of superb straw-colored columbines four feet high.

Looking up, Clover saw above the tree-tops strange pinnacles and spires and obelisks which seemed air-hung, of purple-red and orange-tawny and pale pinkish gray and terra cotta, in which the sunshine and the cloud-shadows broke in a multiplicity of wonderful half-tints. Above them was the dazzling blue of the Colorado sky. She drew a long, long breath.

"So this is a canyon," she said. "How glad I am that I have lived to see one."

"Yes, this is a canyon," Dr. Hope replied. "Some of us think it the canyon; but there are dozens of others, and no two of them are alike. I'm glad you are pleased with this, for it's my favorite. I wish your father could see it."

Clover hardly understood what he said she was so fascinated and absorbed. She looked up at the bright pinnacles, down at the flowers and the sheen of the river-pools and the mad rush of its cascades, and felt as though she were in a dream. Through the dream she caught half-comprehended fragments of conversation from the seat behind. Mrs. Watson was giving her impressions of the scenery.

"It's pretty, I suppose," she remarked; "but it's so very queer, and I'm not used to queer things. And this road is frightfully narrow. If a load of hay or a big Concord coach should come along, I can't think what we should do. I see that Dr. Hope drives carefully, but yet—You don't think we shall meet anything of the kind to-day, do you, Doctor?"

"Not a Concord coach, and certainly not a hay-wagon, for they don't make hay up here in the mountains."

"Well, that is a relief. I didn't know. Ellen she always says, 'Mother, you're a real fidget;' but when one grows old, and has valves in the heart as I have, you never—We might meet one of those big pedler's wagons, though, and they frighten horses worse than anything. Oh, what's that coming now? Let us get out, Dr. Hope; pray, let us all get out."

"Sit still, ma'am," said the doctor, sternly, for Mrs. Watson was wildly fumbling at the fastening of the door. "Mary, put your arm round Mrs. Watson, and hold her tight. There'll be a real accident, sure as fate, if you don't." Then in a gentler tone, "It's only a buggy, ma'am; there's plenty of room. There's no possible risk of a pedler's wagon. What on earth should a pedler be doing up here on the side of Cheyenne! Prairie-dogs don't use pomatum or tin-ware."

"Oh, I didn't know," repeated poor Mrs. Watson, nervously. She watched the buggy timorously till it was safely past; then her spirits revived.

"Well," she cried, "we're safe this time; but I call it tempting Providence to drive so fast on such a rough road. If all canyons are as wild as this, I sha'n't ever venture to go into another."

"Bless me! this is one of our mildest specimens," said Dr. Hope, who seemed to have a perverse desire to give Mrs. Watson a distaste for canyons. "This is a smooth one; but some canyons are really rough. Do you remember, Mary, the day we got stuck up at the top of the Westmoreland, and had to unhitch the horses, and how I stood in the middle of the creek and yanked the carriage round while you held them? That was the day we heard the mountain lion, and there were fresh bear-tracks all over the mud, you remember."

"Good gracious!" cried Mrs. Watson, quite pale; "what an awful place! Bears and lions! What on earth did you go there for?"

"Oh, purely for pleasure," replied the doctor, lightly. "We don't mind such little matters out West. We try to accustom ourselves to wild beasts, and make friends of them."

"John, don't talk such nonsense," cried his wife, quite angrily. "Mrs. Watson, you mustn't believe a word the doctor says. I've lived in Colorado nine years; and I've never once seen a mountain lion, or a bear either, except the stuffed ones in the shops. Don't let the doctor frighten you."

But Dr. Hope's wicked work was done. Mrs. Watson, quite unconvinced by these well-meant assurances, sat pale and awe-struck, repeating under her breath,—

"Dreadful! What will Ellen say? Bears and lions! Oh, dear me!"

"Look, look!" cried Clover, who had not listened to a word of this conversation; "did you ever see anything so lovely?" She referred to what she was looking at,—a small point of pale straw-colored rock some hundreds of feet in height, which a turn in the road had just revealed, soaring above the tops of the trees.

"I don't see that it's lovely at all," said Mrs. Watson, testily. "It's unnatural, if that's what you mean. Rocks ought not to be that color. They never are at the East. It looks to me exactly like an enormous unripe banana standing on end."

This simile nearly "finished" the party. "It's big enough to disagree with all the Sunday-schools in creation at once," remarked the doctor, between his shouts, while even Clover shook with laughter. Mrs. Watson felt that she had made a hit, and grew complacent again.

"See what your brother picked for me," cried Poppy, riding alongside, and exhibiting a great sheaf of columbine tied to the pommel of her saddle. "And how do you like North Cheyenne? Isn't it an exquisite place?"

"Perfectly lovely; I feel as if I must come here every day."

"Yes, I know; but there are so many other places out here about which you have that feeling."

"Now we will show you the other Cheyenne Canyon,—the twin of this," said Dr. Hope; "but you must prepare your mind to find it entirely different."

After rather a rough mile or two through woods, they came to a wooden shed, or shanty, at the mouth of a gorge, and here Dr. Hope drew up his horses, and helped them all out.

"Is it much of a walk?" asked Mrs. Watson.

"It is rather long and rather steep," said Mrs. Hope; "but it is lovely if you only go a little way in, and you and I will sit down the moment you feel tired, and let the others go forward."

South Cheyenne Canyon was indeed "entirely different." Instead of a green-floored, vine-hung ravine, it is a wild mountain gorge, walled with precipitous cliffs of great height; and its river—every canyon has a river—comes from a source at the top of the gorge in a series of mad leaps, forming seven waterfalls, which plunge into circular basins of rock, worn smooth by the action of the stream. These pools are curiously various in shape, and the color of the water, as it pauses a moment to rest in each before taking its next plunge, is beautiful. Little plank walks are laid along the river-side, and rude staircases for the steepest pitches. Up these the party went, leaving Mrs. Watson and Mrs. Hope far behind,—Poppy with her habit over her arm, Clover stopping every other moment to pick some new flower, Phil shying stones into the rapids as he passed,—till the top of the topmost cascade was reached, and looking back they could see the whole wonderful way by which they had climbed, and down which the river made its turbulent rush. Clover gathered a great mat of green scarlet-berried vine like glorified cranberry, which Dr. Hope told her was the famous kinnikinnick, and was just remarking on the cool water-sounds which filled the place, when all of a sudden these sounds seemed to grow angry, the defile of precipices turned a frowning blue, and looking up they saw a great thunder-cloud gathering overhead.

"We must run," cried Dr. Hope, and down they flew, racing at full speed along the long flights of steps and the plank walks, which echoed to the sound of their flying feet. Far below they could see two fast-moving specks which they guessed to be Mrs. Hope and Mrs. Watson, hurrying to a place of shelter. Nearer and nearer came the storm, louder the growl of the thunder, and great hail-stones pattered on their heads before they gained the cabin; none too soon, for in another moment the cloud broke, and the air was full of a dizzy whirl of sleet and rain.

Others besides themselves had been surprised in the ravine, and every few minutes another and another wet figure would come flying down the path, so that the little refuge was soon full. The storm lasted half an hour, then it scattered as rapidly as it had come, the sun broke out brilliantly, and the drive home would have been delightful if it had not been for the sad fact that Mrs. Watson had left her parasol in the carriage, and it had been wet, and somewhat stained by the india-rubber blanket which had been thrown over it for protection. Her lamentations were pathetic.

"Jane Phillips gave it to me,—she was a Sampson, you know,—and I thought ever so much of it. It was at Hovey's—We were there together, and I admired it; and she said, 'Mrs. Watson, you must let me—' Six dollars was the price of it. That's a good deal for a parasol, you know, unless it's really a nice one; but Hovey's things are always—I had the handle shortened a little just before I came away, too, so that it would go into my trunk; it had to be mended anyhow, so that it seemed a good—Dear, dear! and now it's spoiled! What a pity I left it in the carriage! I shall know better another time, but this climate is so different. It never rains in this way at home. It takes a little while about it, and gives notice; and we say that there's going to be a northeaster, or that it looks like a thunder-storm, and we put on our second-best clothes or we stay at home. It's a great deal nicer, I think."

"I am so sorry," said kind little Mrs. Hope. "Our storms out here do come up very suddenly. I wish I had noticed that you had left your parasol. Well, Clover, you've had a chance now to see the doctor's beautiful Colorado hail and thunder to perfection. How do you like them?"

"I like everything in Colorado, I believe," replied Clover, laughing. "I won't even except the hail."

"She's the girl for this part of the world," cried Dr. Hope, approvingly. "She'd make a first-rate pioneer. We'll keep her out here, Mary, and never let her go home. She was born to live at the West."

"Was I? It seems queer then that I should have been born to live in Burnet."

"Oh, we'll change all that."

"I'm sure I don't see how."

"There are ways and means," oracularly.

Mrs. Watson was so cast down by the misadventure to her parasol that she expressed no regret at not being asked to join in the picnic next day, especially as she understood that it consisted of young people. Mrs. Hope very rightly decided that a whole day out of doors, in a rough place, would give pain rather than pleasure to a person who was both so feeble and so fussy, and did not suggest her going. Clover and Phil waked up quite fresh and untired after a sound night's sleep. There seemed no limit to what might be done and enjoyed in that inexhaustibly renovating air.

Odin's Garden proved to be a wonderful assemblage of rocky shapes rising from the grass and flowers of a lonely little plain on the far side of the mesa, four or five miles from St. Helen's. The name of the place came probably from something suggestive in the forms of the rocks, which reminded Clover of pictures she had seen of Assyrian and Egyptian rock carvings. There were lion shapes and bull shapes like the rudely chiselled gods of some heathen worship; there were slender, points and obelisks three hundred feet high; and something suggesting a cat-faced deity, and queer similitudes of crocodiles and apes,—all in the strange orange and red and pale yellow formations of the region. It was a wonderful rather than a beautiful place; but the day was spent very happily under those mysterious stones, which, as the long afternoon shadows gathered over the plain, and the sky glowed with sunset crimson which seemed like a reflection from the rocks themselves, became more mysterious still. Of the merry young party which made up the picnic, seven out of nine had come to Colorado for health; but no one would have guessed it, they seemed so well and so full of the enjoyment of life. Altogether, it was a day to be marked; not with a white stone,—that would not have seemed appropriate to Colorado,—but with a red one. Clover, writing about it afterward to Elsie, felt that her descriptions to sober stay-at-homes might easily sound overdrawn and exaggerated, and wound up her letter thus:—

"Perhaps you think that I am romancing; but I am not a bit. Every word I say is perfectly true, only I have not made the colors half bright or the things half beautiful enough. Colorado is the most beautiful place in the world. [N.B.—Clover had seen but a limited portion of the world so far.] I only wish you could all come out to observe for yourselves that I am not fibbing, though it sounds like it!"



CHAPTER VIII.

HIGH VALLEY.

Clover was putting Phil's chamber to rights, and turning it into a sitting-room for the day, which was always her first task in the morning. They had been at St. Helen's nearly three weeks now, and the place had taken on a very homelike appearance. All the books and the photographs were unpacked, the washstand had vanished behind a screen made of a three-leaved clothes-frame draped with chintz, while a ruffled cover of the same gay chintz, on which bunches of crimson and pink geraniums straggled over a cream-colored ground, gave to the narrow bed the air of a respectable wide sofa.

"There! those look very nice, I think," she said, giving the last touch to a bowl full of beautiful garden roses. "How sweet they are!"

"Your young man seems rather clever about roses," remarked Phil, who, boy-like, dearly loved to tease his sister.

"My young man, as you call him, has a father with a gardener," replied Clover, calmly; "no very brilliant cleverness is required for that."

In a cordial, kindly place, like St. Helen's, people soon make acquaintances, and Clover and Phil felt as if they already knew half the people in the town. Every one had come to see them and deluged them with flowers, and invitations to dine, to drive, to take tea. Among the rest came Mr. Thurber Wade, whom Phil was pleased to call Clover's young man,—the son of a rich New York banker, whose ill-health had brought him to live in St. Helen's, and who had built a handsome house on the principal street. This gilded youth had several times sent roses to Clover,—a fact which Phil had noticed, and upon which he was fond of commenting.

"Speaking of young men," went on Clover, "what do you suppose has become of Clarence Page? He said he should come in to see us soon; but that was ever so long ago."

"He's a fraud, I suspect," replied Phil, lazily, from his seat in the window. He had a geometry on his knees, and was supposed to be going on with his education, but in reality he was looking at the mountains. "I suppose people are pretty busy on ranches, though," he added. "Perhaps they're sheep-shearing."

"Oh, it isn't a sheep ranch. Don't you remember his saying that the cattle got very wild, and they had to ride after them? They wouldn't ride after sheep. I hope he hasn't forgotten about us. I was so glad to see him."

While this talk went on, Clarence was cantering down the lower end of the Ute Pass on his way to St. Helen's. Three hours later his name was brought up to them.

"How nice!" cried Clover. "I think as he's a relative we might let him come here, Phil. It's so much pleasanter than the parlor."

Clarence, who had passed the interval of waiting in noting the different varieties of cough among the sick people in the parlor, was quite of her opinion.

"How jolly you look!" was almost his first remark. "I'm glad you've got a little place of your own, and don't have to sit with those poor creatures downstairs all the time."

"It is much nicer. Some of them are getting better, though."

"Some of them aren't. There's one poor fellow in a reclining-chair who looks badly."

"That's the one whose room Mrs. Watson has marked for her own. She asks him three times a day how he feels, with all the solicitude of a mother," said Phil.

"Who's Mrs. Watson?"

"Well, she's an old lady who is somehow fastened to us, and who considers herself our chaperone," replied Clover, with a little laugh. "I must introduce you by-and-by, but first we want a good talk all by ourselves. Now tell us why you haven't come to see us before. We have been hoping for you every day."

"Well, I've wanted to come badly enough, but there has been a combination of hindrances. Two of our men got sick, so there was more to do than usual; then Geoff had to be away four days, and almost as soon as he got back he had bad news from home, and I hated to leave him alone."

"What sort of bad news?"

"His sister's dead."

"Poor fellow! In England too! You said he was English, didn't you?"

"Yes. She was married. Her husband was a clergyman down in Cornwall somewhere. She was older than Geoff a good deal; but he was very fond of her, and the news cut him up dreadfully."

"No wonder. It is horrible to hear such a thing when one is far from home," observed Clover. She tried to realize how she should feel if word came to St. Helen's of Katy's death, or Elsie's, or Johnnie's; but her mind refused to accept the question. The very idea made her shiver.

"Poor fellow!" she said again; "what could you do for him, Clarence?"

"Not much. I'm a poor hand at comforting any one,—men generally are, I guess. Geoff knows I'm sorry for him; but it takes a woman to say the right thing at such times. We sit and smoke when the work's done, and I know what he's thinking about; but we don't say anything to each other. Now let's speak of something else. I want to settle about your coming to High Valley."

"High Valley? Is that the name of your place?"

"Yes. I want you to see it. It's an awfully pretty place to my thinking,—not so very much higher than this, but you have to climb a good deal to get there. Can't you come? This is just the time,—raspberries ripe, and lots of flowers wherever the beasts don't get at them. Phil can have all the riding he wants, and it'll do poor Geoff lots of good to see some one."

"It would be very nice indeed," doubtfully; "but who could we get to go with us?"

"I thought of that. We don't take much stock in Mrs. Grundy out here; but I supposed you'd want another lady. How would it be if I asked Mrs. Hope? The doctor's got to come out anyway to see one of our herders who's put his shoulder out in a fall. If he would drive you out, and Mrs. Hope would stay on, would you come for a week? I guess you'll like it."

"I 'guess' we should," exclaimed Clover, her face lighting up. "Clarence, how delightful it sounds! It will be lovely to come if Mrs. Hope says yes."

"Then that's all right," replied Clarence, looking extremely pleased. "I'll ride up to the doctor's as soon as dinner's over."

"You'll dine with us, of course?"

"Oh, I always come to Mother Marsh for a bite whenever I stay over the day. She likes to have me. We've been great chums ever since I had fever here, and she took care of me."

Clover was amused at dinner to watch the cool deliberation with which Clarence studied Mrs. Watson and her tortuous conversation, and, as he would have expressed it, "took stock of her." The result was not favorable, apparently.

"What on earth did they send that old thing with you for?" he asked as soon as they went upstairs. "She's as much out of her element here as a canary-bird would be in a cyclone. She can't be any use to you, Clover."

"Well, no; I don't think she is. It was a sort of mistake; I'll tell you about it sometime. But she likes to imagine that she's taking care of me; and as it does no harm, I let her."

"Taking care of you! Great thunder! I wouldn't trust her to take care of a blue-eyed kitten," observed the irreverent Clarence. "Well, I'll ride up and settle with the Hopes, and stop and let you know as I come back."

Mrs. Hope and the doctor were not hard to persuade. In Colorado, people keep their lamps of enjoyment filled and trimmed, so to speak, and their travelling energies ready girt about them, and easily adopt any plan which promises pleasure. The following day was fixed for the start, and Clover packed her valise and Phil's bag, with a sense of exhilaration and escape. She was, in truth, getting very tired of the exactions of Mrs. Watson. Mrs. Watson, on her part, did not at all approve of the excursion.

"I think," she said, swelling with offended dignity, "that your cousin didn't know much about politeness when he left me out of his invitation and asked Mrs. Hope instead. Yes, I know; the doctor had to go up anyway. That may be true, and it may not; but it doesn't alter the case. What am I to do, I should like to know, if the valves of my heart don't open, or don't shut—whichever it is—while I'm left all alone here among strangers?"

"Send for Dr. Hope," suggested Phil. "He'll only be gone one night. Clover doesn't know anything about valves."

"My cousin lives in a rather rough way, I imagine," interposed Clover, with a reproving look at Phil. "He would hardly like to ask a stranger and an invalid to his house, when he might not be able to make her comfortable. Mrs. Hope has been there before, and she's an old friend."