Too utterly at sea to make reply, Chip took the offered hand in his. Hate Dr. Cecil? How could he hate this big, breezy, blue-eyed young woman? She shook his hand heartily and smiled deep into his troubled eyes, and drew the poison from his wounds in that one glance. The Little Doctor plumped into the seat and made room for Cecil, like the spoiled little girl that she was, compared with the other. “I'm going to sit in the middle. Cecil, you're the biggest and you can easily hang on--and, beside, this young man is so fierce with strangers that he'd snub you something awful if we'd give him a chance. He's been scheming, ever since I told him you were coming, to get out of driving in to meet you. He tried to make me take Slim. Slim!” Dr. Cecil smiled at Chip behind the Little Doctor's back, and Chip could have hugged her then and there, for he knew, somehow, that she understood and was his friend. I should like very much to say that it seemed to Chip that the sun shone brighter, and that the grass was greener, and the sky several shades bluer, on that homeward drive--but I must record the facts, which are these: Chip did not know whether the sun shone or the moon, and he didn't care--just so there was light to see the hair blowing about the Little Doctor's face, and to watch the dimple come and go in the cheek next him. And whether the grass was green and the sky blue, or whether the reverse was the case, he didn't know; and if you had asked him, he might have said tersely that he didn't care a darn about the grass--that is, if he gave you sufficient attention to reply at all. CHAPTER XIX. -- Love Finds Its Hour. “Bay Denver's broke out uh the little pasture,” announced the Old Man, putting his head in at the door of the blacksmith shop where Chip was hammering gayly upon a bent branding iron, for want of a better way to kill time and give vent to his surplus energy. “I wish you'd saddle up an' go after him, Chip, if yuh can. I just seen him takin' down the coulee trail like a scared coyote.” “Sure, I'll go. Darn that old villain, he'd jump a fence forty feet high if he took a notion that way.” Chip threw down the hammer and reached for his coat. “I guess the fence must be down som'ers. I'll go take a look. Say! Dell ain't come back from Denson's yit. Yuh want t' watch out Denver don't meet her--he'd scare the liver out uh her.” Chip was well aware that the Little Doctor had not returned from Denson's, where she had been summoned to attend one of the children, who had run a rusty nail into her foot. She had gone alone, for Dr. Cecil was learning to make bread, and had refused to budge from the kitchen till her first batch was safely baked. Chip limped hurriedly to the corral, and two minutes later was clattering down the coulee upon Blazes, after the runaway.