ight, York;
I'm simply telling what I do know. That hat-box was not opened. Let's
talk of better things. Mr. Ponk told me at church yesterday that when
Jerry first came she asked for 'an old gentleman named York
Macpherson.'" Laura's eyes were twinkling with mischief. "From what she
said to me yesterday she is going to depend on you for direction, just
like everybody else who comes to New Eden. I'm dead in love with her
already. Aren't you?"

"Desperately," York returned. "But seriously, Laura, she is 'most too
big a responsibility to joke about. There are a lot of things tied up
for her in this coming West. I have to go to the upper Sage Brush this
morning to be gone for a couple of days. I wish she would come here and
stay with you, so that she might be with the best woman in the world."
York beamed affectionately upon the sweet-faced woman opposite him. "I
wish I didn't have to leave this morning, but I'll be back by to-morrow
night or early Wednesday morning. It is going to be our job to map out
her immediate future. After that, things will take their course without
us, and New Eden, I imagine, will have to get along without her. When I
get back I'll take her down to see her claim. Ponk is the only man
besides myself who knows where it is, and I've fixed him. He can't run a
hotel and garage and play escort all at once. I want to prepare her in a
way, anyhow, for she won't find exactly what she is expecting--another
'Eden' six times enlarged. Meantime turn her gently, if you can, toward
our woolly Western life. I won't say lead. Geraldine Swaim, late of
Philadelphia, will never be led."

"York she's a lamb. Look at her big, pleading eyes," his sister
insisted.

"Laura, she's a rock. Look at her square chin. I'm going now, and I will
and bequeath her to your care. Good-by."

As he left the house his sister heard him whistling the air to the old
song, "I'll paddle my own canoe."

Evidently the fair Philadelphian was still on his mind.

"I wish," he said to himself, as he cleared the north limits of the New
Eden settlement and struck out toward the upper Sage Brush country--"I
wish to goodness I had pressed Laura to tell me more about what that
infernal Big Dipper said to her Saturday. I'll get that creature yet. I
believe she knows that as well as I do. I wish, too, I was sure things
would just stay put until I get back."

Half an hour after York had left town Jerry Swaim, dressed for a drive,
appeared at the