y to live the way he wanted to live, and now he had a puncture
the doctors couldn't mend. What was the use of it?

Wanning's thoughts were fixed on the trout streams and the great
silver-firs in the canyons of the Wind River Mountains, when he was
disturbed by a soft, repeated sniffling. He looked out between his
fingers. Little Annie, carried away by his eloquence, was fairly
panting to make dots and dashes fast enough, and she was sopping her
eyes with an unpresentable, end-of-the-day handkerchief.

Wanning rambled on in his dictation. Why was she crying? What did it
matter to her? He was a man who said good-morning to her, who
sometimes took an hour of the precious few she had left at the end
of the day and then complained about her bad spelling. When the
letter was finished, he handed her a new two dollar bill.

"I haven't got any change tonight; and anyhow, I'd like you to eat a
whole lot. I'm on a diet, and I want to see everybody else eat."

Annie tucked her notebook under her arm and stood looking at the
bill which she had not taken up from the table.

"I don't like to be paid for taking letters to your friends, Mr.
Wanning," she said impulsively. "I can run personal letters off
between times. It ain't as if I needed the money," she added
carelessly.

"Get along with you! Anybody who is eighteen years old and has a
sweet tooth needs money, all they can get."

Annie giggled and darted out with the bill in her hand.

Wanning strolled aimlessly after her into the reception room.

"Let me have that letter before lunch tomorrow, please, and be sure
that nobody sees it." He stopped and frowned. "I don't look very
sick, do I?"

"I should say you don't!" Annie got her coat on after considerable
tugging. "Why don't you call in a specialist? My mother called a
specialist for my father before he died."

"Oh, is your father dead?"

"I should say he is! He was a painter by trade, and he fell off a
seventy-foot stack into the East River. Mother couldn't get anything
out of the company, because he wasn't buckled. He lingered for four
months, so I know all about taking care of sick people. I was
attending business college then, and sick as he was, he used to give
me dictation for practise. He made us all go into professions; the
girls, too. He didn't like us to just run."

Wanning would have liked to keep Annie and hear more about her
family, but it was nearly seven o'clock, and he knew he ought, in
mercy, to l