Ginger put the tray down again and ran to draw the covers up over the plump shoulders. “I’ll come back very soon, Aunt Fan, and please try to sleep!” “Sleep!” said her aunt, sniffing angrily and burrowing into the feathery depths. “I’ll probably smother, but I guess there won’t be much mourning,” and just as Ginger stepped outside she heard her murmuring--“suppose I’ll have to sleep this way for a month ... thank the Lord I didn’t waste a fortune getting my face lifted--a lot of good it’d do now! I should have had my head examined instead!” Ginger carried the tray to the kitchen and the kind little waitress said she was glad to see the poor lady’d kept her appetite, and then she walked out into the soft dusk and stood looking about the doctor’s beloved camp. It was not quite dark, but the circling hills were closing in, somber in silhouette, and the stars were very remote and cold and bright; the tall redwoods seemed to stand guard over the little cuddling cabins, and the trim little paths showed up whitely against the darker earth surrounding them. It was a night of brisk weather and there was no camp fire; they were all gathered in the Lodge, and there were leaping flames on the hearth and a teasing tune going on the phonograph, and the sound of rhythmic feet. Ginger stood irresolute; she hadn’t thought she wanted the Lodge’s robust gayety to-night, but she didn’t want to go back to the cabin until her poor aunt had fallen asleep. While she was hesitating the doctor came to the door and called her in. “I’m might sorry about Miss Fanny,” he said remorsefully. “There won’t be any serious consequences, of course, but I see now--as I should have seen before--that she wasn’t equal to it.” He sighed a little. “I expect my enthusiasm carries me away, sometimes.” Ginger wondered if the doctor, too, had been making up his mind to make up his mind--and had made it up. He was looking rather pensive, and a good deal relieved. The Lodge, save where the bridge players sat, was only dimly lighted by Chinese lanterns and it was several minutes before Ginger saw that Dean Wolcott was among the slow-moving dancers. The doctor went back to the card table and she sat down in a dusky corner and hoped no one would see her and ask her to dance. They were all very gay to-night; the whole camp seemed vibrating with the laughing, lazy tune the machine was grinding out; she decided to take her Aunt Fan back to San Francisco as soon as she could stand the trip, and to go home to Dos Pozos. She wanted work. And in December she would go on to visit Mary Wiley. The dance was finished and another one started, and Dean Wolcott bent over her, suddenly. “Will you dance with me, Ginger?” “I don’t think--I shall have to go back to Aunt Fan--” she began uncertainly.