"Mr. ah--Brockway; I understand that you are purposing to take the party to ah--Feather Plume or ah--Silver Feather, or some such place to-day, and I ah--protest! I have no desire to leave Denver until my ticket is made to conform to my stipulations, sir." Brockway had soap in his eyes, and the porter had carefully hidden the towels; for which cause his reply was brief and to the point. "Please wait till I get washed and dressed before you begin on me, won't you?" "Wait? Do you say ah--wait? I have been doing nothing but wait, sir, ever since my ah--stipulations were ignored. It's an outrage, sir, I----" Brockway had found a towel and was using it vigorously as a counter-irritant. "For Heaven's sake, go away and let me alone until I can get my clothes on!" he exclaimed. "I promised you yesterday you should have the thirty days that you don't need." The aggrieved one had his ticket out, but he put it away again in tremulous indignation. "Go away? Did I ah--understand you to tell me to go away, sir? I ah-h-h----" but words failed him, and he shuffled out of the wash-room, cannoning against the little gentleman in the grass-cloth duster and velvet skull-cap in the angle of the vestibule. "Good-morning, Mr. Brockway," said the comforter, cheerily. "Been having a tilt with Mr. Ticket-limits to begin the day with?" "Oh, as a matter of course," Brockway replied, flinging the damp towel into a corner, and brushing his hair as one who transmutes wrath into vigorous action. "Find him a bit trying, don't you? What particular form does his mania take this morning?" "It's the same old thing. I promised him, yesterday, I'd get the extension on his ticket, and now he says he won't leave Denver till it's done. He 'ah-protests' that I sha'n't go to Silver Plume with the party; wants me to stay in Denver and put in the day telegraphing." "Of course, you'll do it; you do anything anybody asks you to." "Oh, I suppose I'll have to--to keep the peace. And if I don't go and 'personally conduct' the others, there'll be the biggest kind of a row. Isn't it enough to wear the patience of a good-natured angel to frazzles?" "It is, just that. Have a cigar?" "No, thank you. I don't smoke before breakfast." "Neither do I, normally; but like most other people, I leave all my good habits at home when I travel. But about Jordan and the thirty-odd; how are you going to dodge the row?" "The best way I can. There is a good friend of mine on the train--Mr. John Burton, the general agent of the C. & U., in Salt Lake--and perhaps I can get him to go up the canyon for me." "Think he will do it?" "I guess so; to oblige me. He'd lose only a day; and he'd make thirty-odd friends for the C. & U., don't you see." "I must confess that I don't see, from a purely business point of view," was the rejoinder. "We are all ticketed out and back, and we can't change our route if we want to."