is discomfiture. For the first time in
his life he felt himself unequal to a social emergency.

A curious sensation went over Elizabeth. Somehow she felt as if she had
been kissed by a total stranger. She drew back and picked up her small
belongings. For a moment Stanwood thought she was going.

"Don't you get your mail out here any more?" she asked.

"Not very regularly," he replied, guiltily conscious of possessing two
or three illegible letters from his daughter which he had not yet had
the enterprise to decipher.

"Then you did not expect me?"

"Well, no, I can't say I did. But"--with a praiseworthy if not
altogether successful effort--"I am very glad to see you, my dear."

The first half of this speech was so much more convincing than the last,
that the girl felt an unpleasant stricture about her throat, and knew
herself to be on the verge of tears.

"I could go back," she said, with a pathetic little air of dignity.
"Perhaps you would not have any place to put me if I should stay."

"Oh, yes; I can put you in the museum"--and he looked at her with the
first glimmer of appreciation, feeling that she would be a creditable
addition to his collection of curiosities.

Elizabeth met his look with one of quick comprehension, and then she
broke into a laugh which saved the day. It was a pleasant laugh in
itself, and furthermore, if she had not laughed just at that juncture
she would surely have disgraced herself forever by a burst of tears.

Cy Willows, meanwhile, believing that "the gal and her pa" would rather
not be observed at their first meeting, had discreetly busied himself
with the two neat trunks which his passenger had brought.

"Hullo, Jake!" he remarked, as the ranchman appeared at the door; "this
is a great day for you, ain't it?"

The two men took hold of one of the trunks together, and carried it into
the museum. When the door opened, Willows almost dropped his end from
sheer amazement. He stood in the middle of the room, staring from Venus
to altar-cloth, from altar-cloth to censer.

"Gosh!" he remarked at last. "Your gal's struck it rich!"

The "gal" took it more quietly. To her, the master of this fine
apartment was not Jake Stanwood, the needy ranchman, but Jacob Stanwood,
Esq., gentleman and scholar, to the manor born. She stepped to the
window, and looked out across the shimmering plain to the rugged peaks
and the warm blue slopes of "the range," and a sigh of admiration
escaped her.