was real and
infectiously carefree. "Take off your hat, chicken. I'll go beg a hunk
of ice from my dear friend Peter, and make some lemonade as is lemonade;
or claret punch, if you aren't a blue ribboner, or white-ribboner, or
some other kind of a good-ribboner." Miss Georgie hated herself for
sliding into sheer flippancy, but she preferred that extreme to the
other, and she could not hold her ground just then at the "happy
medium."

Evadna, however, seemed to disapprove of the flippancy. She did not take
off her hat, and she stated evenly that she must go, and that she really
did not care for lemonade, or claret punch, either.

"What, in Heaven's name, DO you care for--besides yourself?" flared Miss
Georgie, quite humanly exasperated. "There, chicken--the heat always
turns me snappy," she repented instantly. "Please pinch me." She held
out a beautiful, tapering forearm, and smiled.

"I'm the snappy one," said Evadna, but she did not smile as she began
drawing on her gauntlets slowly and deliberately.

If she were waiting for Miss Georgie to come back to the subject of
Grant, she was disappointed, for Miss Georgie did not come to any
subject whatever. A handcar breezed past the station, the four
section-men pumping like demons because of the slight down grade and
their haste for their dinner.

Huckleberry gave one snort and one tug backward upon the tie rope and
then a coltish kick into the air when he discovered that he was
free. After that, he took off through the sagebrush at a lope, too
worldly-wise to follow the trail past the store, where someone might
rush out and grab him before he could dodge away. He was a wise little
pinto--Huckleberry.

"And now, I suppose I'll have the pleasure of walking home," grumbled
Evadna, standing upon the platform and gazing, with much self-pity,
after her runaway.

"It's noon--stay and eat dinner with me, chicken. Some of the boys will
bring him back after you the minute he gets to the ranch. It's too hot
to walk." Miss Georgie laid a hand coaxingly upon her arm.

But Evadna was in her mood of perversity. She wouldn't stay to dinner,
because Aunt Phoebe would be expecting her. She wouldn't wait for
Huckleberry to be brought back to her, because she would never hear the
last of it. She didn't mind the heat the least bit, and she would walk.
And no, she wouldn't borrow Miss Georgie's parasol; she hated parasols,
and she always had and always would. She gathered up her ridi