's taste. She therefore
dismissed Abbey's comment carelessly:

"Some one has to do it."

A faint flush crept slowly up into his round, boyish face. He looked at
her with disconcerting steadiness. Perhaps something in his expression
gave her the key to his thought, or it may have been that peculiar
psychical receptiveness which in a woman we are pleased to call
intuition; but at any rate Stella divined what was coming and would have
forestalled it by rising. He prevented that move by catching her hands.

"Look here, Stella," he blurted out, "it just grinds me to death to see
you slaving away in this camp, feeding a lot of roughnecks. Won't you
marry me and cut this sort of thing out? We'd be no end good chums."

She gently disengaged her hands, her chief sensation one of amusement,
Abbey was in such an agony of blushing diffidence, all flustered at his
own temerity. Also, she thought, a trifle precipitate. That was not the
sort of wooing to carry her off her feet. For that matter she was quite
sure nothing Paul Abbey could do or say would ever stir her pulses. She
had to put an end to the situation, however. She took refuge in a
flippant manner.

"Thanks for the compliment, Mr. Abbey," she smiled. "But really I
couldn't think of inflicting repentance at leisure on you in that
offhand way. You wouldn't want me to marry you just so I could resign
the job of chef, would you?"

"Don't you like me?" he asked plaintively.

"Not that way," she answered positively.

"You might try," he suggested hopefully. "Honest, I'm crazy about you.
I've liked you ever since I saw you first. I wouldn't want any greater
privilege than to marry you and take you away from this sort of thing.
You're too good for it. Maybe I'm kind of sudden, but I know my own
mind. Can't you take a chance with me?"

"I'm sorry," she said gently, seeing him so sadly in earnest. "It isn't
a question of taking a chance. I don't care for you. I haven't got any
feeling but the mildest sort of friendliness. If I married you, it would
only be for a home, as the saying is. And I'm not made that way. Can't
you see how impossible it would be?"

"You'd get to like me," he declared. "I'm just as good as the next man."

His smooth pink-and-white skin reddened again.

"That sounds a lot like tooting my own horn mighty strong," said he.
"But I'm in dead earnest. If there isn't anybody else yet, you could
like me just as well as the next fellow. I'd be awfully good