"Oh, Jim, you feelin' all right?" There was a little tremble in her voice. "I knew it was you the minute you rode past an' picked up that handkerchief Mr. Perkins give you yesterday, an' when you pitched off that horse I thought you was dead. You hadn't no call to take any chance like that with your back hurt an' that long tramp an' all; but it was splendid." She paused, breathless, and he patted her shoulder. Somehow she didn't look so downright homely this morning, or else he was growing used to her little, turned-up nose. Her tow-colored hair was looser about her face, and where the sun struck a strand of it, it shone like spun gold. "I'm fine," he assured her. "But who was that man you were talking to just now?" "Him? Oh, that was the clown," Lou replied. "He says the old man is just crazy 'bout your ridin', an' if you'll stay along with the show he can teach me to stand still for the knife-thrower; the last girl got scared, an' quit just because she got a little scratch on the neck. The clown says I got the nerve for it, an' I guess I have, only they ain't goin' towards New York." She added the last almost reluctantly, and Jim shuddered. The knife-thrower! What wouldn't the little dare-devil be willing to try next? "I guess you have got the nerve," he admitted grimly. "But we're going to be in New York by Saturday night, remember. As soon as I get my quarter from the stout gentleman over there with the striped vest, we'll be on our way." But it was nearly an hour before they took to the road again. The boss insisted on starting them off with a hearty breakfast, and there were good-bys to be said to the rough, kindly folk who had taken them in as friends. Except for the litter of hand-bills and peanut-shells, the last vestiges of the circus were being removed from the lot as they finally departed, and what had been to Lou a wondrous, glittering pageant had become but a memory. "I dunno but I'd as lief join a circus," she observed, meditatively, after they had traveled a mile or more. "Maybe I could learn in New York how to do some of them tricks. I could git the hang of that business up on them swings in no time, only I don't like the way that girl dressed----" "Nonsense!" Jim snapped, and wondered at his own indignation. "We'll find something suitable for you to do, or you can go to school----" "School!" she interrupted him in her turn. "I--I'd like to learn things an' be like other folks, but I ain't--I mean I'm not--goin' to any institootion." He glanced at her curiously. This was the first time she had made any conscious effort to correct herself, the first evidence she had given that she had noted the difference between his speech and hers. "I didn't mean an institution, but a real school, Lou," he explained gently. "One where you'll have no uniform to wear, and no work to do except to learn."