--of being with me. He took the trouble to make that
clear to me, at least!" Evadna's eyes were very blue and very bright,
but there was no look of an angel in her face.

Miss Georgie pressed her lips together tightly for a minute. When she
spoke, she was cheerfully impersonal as to tone and manner.

"Chicken, you're a little goose. The man is simply crazy about you, and
harassed to death with this ranch business. Once that's settled--well,
you'll see what sort of a lover he can be!"

"Thank you so much for holding out a little hope and encouragement, my
dear!" Evadna, by the way, looked anything but thankful; indeed, she
seemed to resent the hope and the encouragement as a bit of unwarranted
impertinence. She glanced toward the door as if she meditated an
immediate departure, but ended by settling back in the chair and
beginning to rock again.

"It's a nasty, underhand business from start to finish," said Miss
Georgie, ignoring the remark. "It has upset everybody--me included, and
I'm sure it isn't my affair. It's just one of those tricky cases that
you know is rotten to the core, and yet you can't seem to get hold
of anything definite. My dad had one or two experiences with old
Baumberger--and if ever there was a sly old mole of a man, he's one.

"Did you ever take after a mole, chicken? They used to get in our garden
at home. They burrow underneath the surface, you know, and one never
sees them. You can tell by the ridge of loose earth that they're
there, and if you think you've located Mr. Mole, and jab a stick
down, why--he's somewhere else, nine times in ten. I used to call them
Baumbergers, even then. Dad," she finished reminiscently, "was always
jabbing his law stick down where the earth seemed to move--but he never
located old Baumberger, to my knowledge."

She stopped, because Evadna, without a shadow of doubt, was looking
bored. Miss Georgie regarded her with the frown she used when she was
applying her mental measuring-stick. She began to suspect that Evadna
was, after all, an extremely self-centered little person; she was
sorry for the suspicion, and she was also conscious of a certain
disappointment which was not altogether for herself.

"Ah, well"--she dismissed analysis and the whole subject with a laugh
that was partly yawn--"away with dull care. Away with dull everything.
It's too hot to think or feel. A real emotion is as superfluous and
oppressive as a--a 'camel petticoat!" This time her laugh