Having over-sailed the mark by a mile, I hastened to trim in canvas and beat back onto the course as originally charted. The last year or two in California hadn't been so bad, I admitted. I had even made quite a bit of money, so that this little river jaunt of mine on the Yellowstone was really almost in the nature of a pleasure trip. (Funny thing, but that river-pleasure-jaunt assertion was the only statement I made at which she seemed inclined to lift an eyebrow.) I had brought a few of my California home-dried apricots along, I continued. Perhaps they would enjoy a few for a change. _That_ was the point I had been man[oe]uvring to. Now I would play my comforter rôle. Spreading the last of my bag of sticky slabs out before the fire, I started to tell how they were made. First there was the picking by men and the cutting and pitting by Mexican girls. She interrupted to ask what the girls were paid. I told her about fifteen cents a box, adding that some of the defter fingered of them often made three and four dollars a day. She sighed at that, and wished she had a chance to earn that much--sure and safe where the hail couldn't get it. Solberg came in with her husband at this juncture. He was a good-looking young chap, well set up and with the right kind of an eye. There was no doubt of the depth of his discouragement and depression, but he was plainly too good stuff to sulk for long. He shook hands warmly enough, but there was a trace of bitterness in the smile with which he remarked that he was glad to see that I had survived the hail better than had his oats and corn. I rattled right on about the apricots, telling of the sulphuring, sunning, stacking, binning and packing, adding--in a convenient moment when the wife had stepped out to shake the tablecloth--that ever effective little capsule about the Mexican _señoritas_, all young, dark-eyed and beautiful. The good chap actually lifted his head and took a deep, shoulder-squaring breath at that. He relapsed again when I failed to develop the theme, but it was only temporary. Ten minutes later, with great inconsequentiality, I heard him asking his wife how she would like to go to California and work in the apricots. Then he went over, wound up the Victrola and put on "_Smiles! Smiles! Smiles!_" What a lot of latent good there was in those California home-dried apricots, I reflected as we splashed along homeward! Surely I must not fail to renew my supply at the next town.