highbred in every line,
with dark eyes that mirrored passing thoughts. She was the Virginia he
had played with when Keno was booming and his own sisters had been there
for company; and now after ten years he remembered the time when he had
asked her, in vain, for a kiss.

"I've got something to tell you," he said at last and Virginia stepped
into the racer.

"Virginia!" reminded the Widow, and then at a glance she turned round
and flung into the house. There were times and occasions when she had
found it safer not to press her maternal authority too far, and the look
that she received was first notice from Virginia that such an occasion
had arrived. The motor began to thunder, Wiley threw in the clutch, and
with a speed that was startling, they whipped a sudden circle and went
bubbling away down the road.

It stretched on endlessly, this road across the desert, as straight as a
surveyor's line, and as they cleared the rough gulches and glided down
into its immensity Virginia glanced at the desert and sighed.

"Pretty big," he suggested and as she nodded slowly he raised his eyes
to the hills. "I don't know," he went on, "whether you'll like Los
Angeles. You'll get lonely for this, sometimes."

"Yes, but not for that"--she jerked a thumb back at Keno--"that place is
pretty small. What's left, of course; but it seems to me sometimes
they're all of them lame, halt and blind. Always quarreling and
backbiting and jumping each other's claims--but--what do you think of
the Paymaster?"

She shot the question at him and it occurred suddenly to Wiley that
perhaps she had a programme, too.

"Well, I'll tell you," he began, deftly changing his ground, "I'm in
Dutch on that, all around. When I came home full of buckshot and the Old
Man heard about it I got my orders to come back and apologize. Well,
I'll do that--to you--and you can tell your mother I'm sure sorry I went
up on that dump."

He grinned and motioned to his injured foot, but Virginia was in no mood
for a joke.

"That's all right," she said, "and I accept your apology--though I don't
know exactly what it's for. But I asked your opinion of the Paymaster."

"Oh, yes," he replied and then he began to temporize. "You'd better tell
me what you want it for, first."

"What? Do you have one opinion for one set of people and another for
somebody else? I thought!"---- She paused and the hot blood leapt to her
cheeks as she saw where her temper had led her. "Well," s