midday meal.

This was still more disconcerting than the hotel, but the closer she came
to the ride, the more resigned she became, for she began to relive the
long hours of torture on the trip outward, during which she had endured
clouds of dust and blazing heat. There were some disadvantages in the old
stage, romantic as her conception of it had been. Furthermore, the coach
had gone; so she made application for her seat at once.

At two o'clock, as the car came to the door, she entered it with a sense
of having stepped from one invading chariot of progress to another, so big
and shining and up to date was its glittering body, shining with brass and
glowing with brave red paint. It was driven, also, by a small, lean young
fellow, whom the cowboys on her father's ranch would have called a
"lunger," so thin and small were his hands and arms. He was quite as far
from old Tom Quentan as the car was from the coach on which he used to
perch.

The owner of the machine, perceiving under Virginia's veil a girl's pretty
face, motioned her to the seat with the driver, and rode beside her for a
few minutes (standing on the foot-board), to inquire if she were visiting
friends in the Fork.

"Yes," she replied, curtly, "I am."

Something in her tone discouraged him from further inquiry, and he soon
dropped away.

The seats were apparently quite filled with men, when at the last moment a
middle-aged woman, with a penetrating, nasal, drawling utterance, inquired
if she were expected to be "squoze in betwixt them two strange men on that
there back seat."

Lee Virginia turned, and was about to greet the woman as an old
acquaintance when something bold and vulgar in the complaining vixen's
face checked the impulse.

The stage-agent called her "Miss McBride," and with exaggerated courtesy
explained that travel was heavy, and that he had not known that she was
intending to go.

One of the men, a slender young fellow, moved to the middle of the seat,
and politely said, "You can sit on the outside, madam."

She clambered in with doleful clamor. "Well, I never rode in one of these
pesky things before, and if you git me safe down to the Fork I'll promise
never to jump the brute another time."

A chuckle went 'round the car; but it soon died out, for the new-comer
scarcely left off talking for the next three hours, and Virginia was very
glad she had not claimed acquaintanceship.

As they whirled madly down the valley the girl was