Good Indian, knowing well the easy custom of the country which makes smoking always permissible, rolled himself a cigarette while he waited for her to come back to his side of the room. He was just holding the match up and waiting for a clear blaze before setting his tobacco afire, when came a tap-tap of feet on the platform, and Evadna appeared in the half-open doorway. “Oh!” she exclaimed, and widened her indigo eyes at him sitting there and looking so much at home. “Come right in, chicken,” Miss Georgie invited cordially. “Don't stand there in the hot sun. Mr. Imsen is going to turn the seat of honor over to you this instant. Awfully glad you came. Have some candy.” Evadna sat down in the rocker, thrust her two little feet out so that the toe, of her shoes showed close together beyond the hem of her riding-skirt, laid her gauntleted palms upon the arms of the chair and rocked methodically, and looked at Grant and then at Miss Georgie, and afterward tilted up her chin and smiled superciliously at an insurance company's latest offering to the public in the way of a calendar two feet long. “When did you come up?” Good Indian asked her, trying so hard to keep a placating note out of his voice that he made himself sound apologetic. “Oh--about an hour ago, I think,” Evadna drawled sweetly--the sweet tones which always mean trouble, when employed by a woman. Good Indian bit his lip, got up, and threw his cigarette out of the window, and looked at her reproachfully, and felt vaguely that he was misunderstood and most unjustly placed upon the defensive. “I only came over,” Evadna went on, as sweetly as before, “to say that there's a package at the store which I can't very well carry, and I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind taking it--when you go.” “I'm going now, if you're ready,” he told her shortly, and reached for his hat. Evadna rocked a moment longer, making him wait for her reply. She glanced at Miss Georgie still busy at the telegraph table, gave a little sigh of resignation, and rose with evident reluctance. “Oh--if you're really going,” she drawled, and followed him outside. CHAPTER XVI. “DON'T GET EXCITED!” Lovers, it would seem, require much less material for a quarrel than persons in a less exalted frame of mind. Good Indian believed himself very much in love with his Christmas angel, and was very much inclined to let her know it, but at the same time he saw no reason why he should not sit down in Miss Georgie's rocking-chair, if he liked, and he could not quite bring himself to explain even to Evadna his reason for doing so. It humiliated him even to think of apologizing or explaining, and he was the type of man who resents humiliation more keenly than a direct injury. As to Evadna, her atmosphere was that of conscious and magnanimous superiority to any feeling so humanly petty as jealousy--which is extremely irritating to anyone who is at all sensitive to atmospheric conditions.