ove her over, maybe--if
she'd come with me. I coulda took the bay team and top-buggy, and done
the thing right. I coulda--hell, there's a _heap_ uh things I coulda
done that would uh been a lot more wise than what I did do! Maybe she
ain't coming at all, and--"

On the heels of that he saw a spring-wagon, come rattling down the
trail across the creek. There were two seats full, and two parasols
were bobbing seductively, and one of them was blue. "I'll bet a dollar
that's them now," murmured Billy, and once more felt anxiously of his
hair where it had gone limp under his hat. "Darned kids--they'd uh kept
me there till I looked like I'd been wrassling calves half a day,"
went with the patting. He turned and went briskly through an empty
and untrampled part of the grove to the place where the wagon would be
most likely to stop. "I'm sure going to make good to-day or--" And a
little farther--"What if it ain't _them_?"

Speedily he discovered that it was "them," and at the same time he
discovered something else which pleased him not at all. Dressed with
much care, so that even Billy must reluctantly own him good-looking
enough, and riding so close to the blue parasol that his horse barely
escaped grazing a wheel, was the Pilgrim. He glared at Billy in
unfriendly fashion and would have shut him off completely from
approach to the wagon; but a shining milk can, left carelessly by a
bush, caught the eye of his horse, and after that the Pilgrim was very
busy riding erratically in circles and trying to keep in touch with
his saddle.

Billy, grown surprisingly bold, went straight to where the blue
parasol was being closed with dainty deliberation. "A little more, and
you'd have been late for dinner," he announced, smiling up at her, and
held out his eager arms. Diplomacy, perhaps, should have urged him to
assist the other lady first--but Billy Boyle was quite too direct
to be diplomatic and besides, the other lady was on the opposite side
from him.

Miss Bridger may have been surprised, and she may or may not have been
pleased; Billy could only guess at her emotions--granting she felt
any. But she smiled down at him and permitted the arms to receive her,
and she also permitted--though with some hesitation--Billy to lead her
straight away from the wagon and its occupants and from the gyrating
Pilgrim to the deep delights of the grove.

"Mr. Walland is a good rider, don't you think?" murmured Miss Bridger,
gazing over her sho