oman of letters. Why should one be a frump because one wrote?

Her friendship with Peter was to endure to greenest old age, more
platonic, perhaps, than that of Madame Recamier and Chateaubriand. It was
to be fruitful in letters that would compare favorably with the best of
the seventeenth century series. Even now her own letters to Peter were no
sprightly scrawl of passing events, but efforts whose seriousness
suggested, at least in their carefully elaborated stages of structure, the
letters of the ladies of Cranford.

But in the course of these Western wanderings, undertaken not wholly
without consideration of Peter, there had appeared in the maplike
exactness of her plans an indefinite territory that threatened
undreamed-of proportions. It menaced the scheme of the letters, it shook
the foundations of the Chateaubriand-Recamier friendship. The unknown
quantity was none other than the frequent and irritating mention of one
Judith Rodney, who, from all accounts, appeared a half-breed. Her name,
her beauty, some intrinsic charm of personality made her an all too
frequent topic, except in the case of Peter. He had been singularly keen
in scenting any interrogatory venue that led to the mysterious half-breed;
when questioned he persistently refused to exhibit her as a type.

Kitty knew that she had treated her long-suffering cavalier with scant
consideration the day he had spurred across the desert to see her. True,
she had written him on her arrival, but, with feminine perversity of
logic, thought it a trifle inconsiderate of him to come so soon after that
trying railroad journey. An ardent resumption of his suit--and Peter could
be depended on for renewing it early and often--was farthest from her
inclination at that particular time. She intended to salve her conscience
at the wolf-hunt for her casual reception of his impetuous visit. But
apparently Peter did not intend to be prodigal of opportunity.

"How garrulous you people are this morning!" Nannie Wetmore challenged
them. Peter came out of his brown study with the look of one who has again
returned to earth.

"You don't find it like the drop-curtain of a theatre, now that you've
seen it?" he questioned Kitty. For she had doubted her pleasure in the
mountains, in the conviction that they would be too dramatic for her
simple taste.

Kitty closed her eyes and sighted the peaks as if she were getting the
color scheme for an afternoon toilet.

"Mass, bulk, rather