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_