a little viciously.

"What do you mean?" she said, abruptly.

"You were good friends enough until"--

"Until he insulted me just now; is that it?"

"Until he thought," stammered Cass, "that because you were--you
know--not so--so--so careful as other girls, he could be a little
freer."

"And so, because I preferred to ride a mile with him to see something
real that had happened, and tried to be useful instead of looking in
shop-windows in Main Street or promenading before the hotel"--

"And being ornamental," interrupted Cass. But this feeble and
un-Cass-like attempt at playful gallantry met with a sudden check.

Miss Porter drew herself together, and looked out of the window. "Do
you wish me to walk the rest of the way home?"

"No," said Cass, hurriedly, with a crimson face and a sense of
gratuitous rudeness.

"Then stop that kind of talk, right there!"

There was an awkward silence. "I wish I was a man," she said, half
bitterly, half earnestly. Cass Beard was not old and cynical enough to
observe that this devout aspiration is usually uttered by those who
have least reason to deplore their own femininity; and, but for the
rebuff he had just received, would have made the usual emphatic dissent
of our sex, when the wish is uttered by warm red lips and tender
voices--a dissent, it may be remarked, generally withheld, however,
when the masculine spinster dwells on the perfection of woman. I dare
say Miss Porter was sincere, for a moment later she continued,
poutingly:

"And yet I used to go to fires in Sacramento when I was only ten years
old. I saw the theatre burnt down. Nobody found fault with me then."

Something made Cass ask if her father and mother objected to her boyish
tastes. The reply was characteristic if not satisfactory:

"Object? I'd like to see them do it!"

The direction of the road had changed. The fickle moon now abandoned
Miss Porter and sought out Cass on the front seat. It caressed the
young fellow's silky moustache and long eyelashes, and took some of the
sunburn from his cheek.

"What's the matter with your neck?" said the girl, suddenly.

Cass looked down, blushing to find that the collar of his smart "duck"
sailor shirt was torn open. But something more than his white, soft,
girlish skin was exposed; the shirt front was dyed quite red with blood
from a slight cut on the shoulder. He remembered to have felt a scratch
while struggling with Hornsby.

The girl's soft eyes sparkle