again! I resent it!" and she
struck the floor with her foot. "Henceforth, if we are to remain
friends, you will refrain from lecturing me!" and she left the room with
a feeling of having done two men a wrong by being unjust to herself, and
this feeling deepened into shame as she lay in her bed that night. It
was her first serious difference with Lawson and she grew unhappy over
it. "But he shouldn't take sides against me like that," she said, in an
attempt to justify her anger.

On the second morning thereafter Lawson came into the office and said:
"Well, Captain, we leave you this morning."

Curtis looked up into his visitor's fine, sensitive face, and exclaimed,
abruptly--almost violently: "I'm going to miss you, old man."

"My heart's with you," replied Lawson. "And I shall return next spring."

"Bring Miss Brisbane with you."

"I'd like to do so, but she is vastly out of key--and I doubt.
Meanwhile, if I can be of any use to you in Washington let me know."

"Thank you, Lawson, I trust you perfectly," Curtis replied, with a glow
of warm liking.

As he stood at the gate looking up into Elsie's face, she seemed very
much softened, and he wished to reach his hand and stay her where she
sat; but the last word was spoken, and the wagon rolled away with no
more definite assurance of her growing friendship than was to be read in
a polite smile.

Jennie was tearful as she said: "After all, they were worth while."

Curtis sighed as he said: "Sis, the realities of our position begin to
make themselves felt. Play-spells will be fewer now that our artists are
gone."

"They certainly broke our fall," replied Jennie, soberly. "Osborne
Lawson is fine, and I don't believe Elsie Bee Bee is as ferocious as she
pretends to be."

"It's her training. She has breathed the air of rapacity from
childhood. I can't blame her for being her father's child."

Jennie looked at him as if he were presented from a new angle of vision.
"George, there _is_ a queer streak in you--for a soldier; you're too
soft-hearted. But don't you get too much interested in Elsie Bee Bee;
she's dangerous--and, besides, Mr. Lawson wears an air of command."

VII

ELSIE RELENTS A LITTLE

The feeling against the redmen, intensified throughout the State by the
removal of Sennett, beat against Curtis like a flood. Delegations of
citizens, headed by Streeter and Johnson, proceeded at once to
Washington, laden with briefs, affidavits, and petitions