There was no need to say it. Fayte, glancing aside at Hilda’s glowing face, might easily have been aware whose was the tall figure moving beside Mrs. Burkett across from the B Z B ambulance. Even Miss Ferguson, looking back from the buckboard and catching sight of her pupil, got some guess as to that secret happiness which was transforming her. Pearse, hurriedly placing Mrs. Burkett’s basket and coming to help Hilda down, got Colonel Marchbanks’ shoulder turned to him with a grunt; the colonel spoke afterward, low and angrily, to his wife. But what did it matter? Pearse’s look and gesture as he swung Hilda from her saddle, and they stood a moment gazing in each other’s eyes, suggested that the two of them were alone on the Staked Plain. “Well, I declare! I thought he was going to kiss her—didn’t you?” Maybelle observed to her brother, whose only answer was a black look. The hurry of getting the Flying M lunch spread out, of finding a place on the coals for its coffee-pot and its kettle of frijoles, covered, but did not conceal, the state of affairs between Hilda and Pearse. By the time the party was settled around the long tablecloth it was plain that the colonel and Mrs. Marchbanks had a disturbing consciousness of it. Nobody could fail to note the glances that passed between the two. Pearse sat close enough to speak unheard by the others, and Mrs. Burkett, being a woman and therefore a match-maker, looked with smiling defiance at her neighbors, as she raised an already round and hearty voice another notch or so to cover their whispering. Altogether, things began to be somewhat strained before the meal was over. Jinnie Marchbanks, from the first, had dotted on Hilda; and took an instant liking to the new man, who had been nice to her at the Grainger dance. She sat between the two, or rather slightly in front of their dropped hands which sometimes thus found an opportunity for joining. Hilda wasn’t aware of what she ate and drank—or if she was eating or drinking at all. It didn’t even infringe on her joy that the Marchbankses, excepting always Maybelle, seemed to be trying to make an interloper of Pearse. Every one else appeared to like him. She could see he was popular and had a standing of his own. And he showed himself very openly and decidedly her special friend—her property, Maybelle would have said. Lunch was eaten and cleared away. It was two hours later; every known game that would keep the group together had been proposed and carried on as long as the young folks would stand for it. The thin echoes of shouts and laughter came across from the farther end of the big picnic ground, where the town crowd from Juan Chico had long tables that the restaurant men supplied. It had not been noticed that the children were no longer with them till Tod and Jinnie with the Burkett youngsters came surging into their midst, announcing that they had been up the creek, and that there was a steer bogged down there.