THE middle of July Ginger’s Aunt Fan began writing her and begging her earnestly to come to San Francisco and visit her at the St. Agnes. She was lonely and blue, she wrote, and although she ate less than a microbe she now tipped the scales at a hundred and seventy-three pounds, and a New York friend had written her that Jim Featherstone was “stepping out” with a woman young enough to be his daughter--not that she cared, of course; her warm wish was to see old Jim happy, for he was a prince if ever there was one, but _not_ to have him make a fool of himself. Ranch affairs were too numerous and pressing when the first letter came, but after three of them, and a breathless long distance telephone call, the girl put the reins into Estrada’s brown and weathered hands and went north. It had been a hard and busy season and she found herself, oddly, a little tired; it was not like her to be tired. She would like a week or two of brisk San Francisco climate, a lecture, a play; perhaps, most of all, she would be glad to be away from ’Rome Ojeda’s ardent importunities. She was quite sure that she was never going to marry ’Rome, but he was just as sure that she was, and was beginning to get boisterous and vehement about it, and was drinking a good deal, and she was rather worn with the struggle. Sometimes she thought it might be simpler to marry him ... but she knew that it wouldn’t be anything else. This time her Aunt Fan met her without a criticism of her clothes. “Well,” she said, looking her over pleasantly, “I’ll say this--if you didn’t get anything else out of that--that Wolcott episode, you learned how to dress, and that’s _something_! I suppose everything you bought in the east is as good as new; that’s what it is to be a string-bean figure. I’ve burst through every rag of mine like an elephant through a jungle; I expect any day now I’ll have to get a larger apartment! My dear,” she shook her intricately waved head, “you simply can’t imagine how lucky you are--never having to go into shops and ask for ‘out-sizes’; never have to let saleswomen as flat as paper dolls show you their ‘stylish stouts’ and patronize you! I’m about discouraged, Ginger. And that’s one reason”--she spoke more briskly--“why I’m going down to the doctor’s camp. He’s asked me, year after year, but you know how I hate the country; ranches are bad enough, but camps-- Well, I _know_ I’d lose there--rough fare, and exercise. The doctor _says_ I’d lose.” Ginger tried to be grave and sympathetic. She thought her Aunt Fan would enjoy it, and it was surely only right to go, when the doctor had asked her so often. “And you mustn’t let me keep you, Aunt Fan, if you want to go at once. I intended to stay only a few days with you.” Mrs. Featherstone opened her prominent blue eyes. “But I want you to go with me, child! You must go with me!” “Oh, Aunt Fan, that’s dear of you, but I don’t believe I can--possibly.”