“Oh, it’s been a good many moments.” She did try to make her tone a bit sarcastic, though her voice was tremulous. “And maybe you only thought I looked such a baby. I’m nearly seventeen. You”—she tried to laugh—“you offered me the kids at the ranches to play with.” “I was just a plain fool,” said Pearse. “I’d got used to thinking of you as a child—and I—but you’ll forgive me, Hilda, and,” eagerly, “give me the next dance and let’s sit it out. I’ve got so many things to say to you.” In their absorption, they did not notice that harp and violin were stilled. Now Fayte’s voice broke in upon them. “Mightn’t you folks just as well quit when the music does?” They looked about them. The other couples were seeking seats. “I’m to have the next I suppose, Hilda,” Fayte said, rather stiffly. He stood squarely between them and the chairs to which Pearse would have led his partner. He spoke only to the girl herself. “Oh, why, I—I just promised that to—” Hilda glanced up, in confusion. Pearse’s tone, cool, decisive, solved the situation. “She’s promised it to me, Marchbanks,” he finished for her. “The room’s hot. We were going to sit on the porch.” Then he added civilly, “She thought you’d excuse her.” Fayte’s eye flashed. He seemed to restrain a hot retort. But Pearse, choosing to see nothing amiss, pushed past him and kept himself between Marchbanks and Hilda. The press of dancers around the door opened out to let them through. Hilda went almost without volition of her own. She had a sense of a great listening pause in her being. Outside the door, Pearse passed ahead of her, leaping down off the porch end, reaching up to lift her and settle her comfortably on its edge. “This’ll do,” he said. “We’ll get half a chance for a little talk here.” From his seat on the grass below he studied her, a radiant, victorious Hilda, in the first exquisiteness of girlish bloom. She got only a reflected light on his face, yet she could see that he was trying to identify her with the little brown girl he had found playing romances in the cyclone cellar, the half-seen girl at the camp-fire beside the trail from Sandoval County, who had just been making—as she told him—a full hand in a long, hard cattle drive, the dusty, unkempt rider of that last interview in the little hollow by the creek, so few months ago. “Tell me,” he said suddenly, “why didn’t you give me a chance to see you before? You must have been out here in Encinal County several months.” “Exactly three, Pearse.” Hilda’s eyes were dancing. “I’ve just about finished my first term with Miss Ferguson. She’s a splendid teacher. You’ll be interested to know about my studies. That’s what you said in your letter.” “My letter?” Pearse looked foolish.