"When shall it be?" "Any time. If I'm not home, stay until I get back. Daddy likes you. You'll love my mother." The vague "any time" occurred three days later. Young VB made a special trip over the hills to the S Bar S. The girl was stretched in a hammock, reading, when he rode up, and at the sound of his horse she scrambled to her feet, flushed, and evidently disconcerted. "I'd given you up!" she cried. "In three days?" taking the hand she offered. "Well--most boys in the East would have come the next morning--if they were really interested." "This is Colorado," he reminded her. He sat crosslegged on the ground at her feet, and they talked of the book she had been reading. It was a novel of music and a musician and a rare achievement, she said. He questioned her about the story, and their talk drifted to music, on which they both could converse well. "You don't know what it means--to sit here and talk of these things with you," he said hungrily. "Well, I should like to know," she said, leaning forward over her knees. For two long hours they talked as they never had talked before; of personal tastes, of kindred enthusiasms, of books and plays and music and people. They went into the ranch house, and Gail played for him--on the only grand piano in that section of the state. They came out, and she saddled her pony to ride part way back through the hills with him. "_Adios,_ my friend," she called after him, as he swung away from her. "It's your turn to call now," he shouted back to her, and when the ridge took him from sight he leaned low to the Captain's ear and repeated gently,--"my friend!" So the barrier of reserve was broken. VB did not dare think into the future in any connection--least of all in relation to this new and growing friendship; yet he wanted to make their understanding more complete though he would scarcely admit that fact even to himself. A week had not passed when Gail Thorpe drove the automobile up to the VB gate. "I didn't come to see the Captain this time," she announced to them both. "I came to pay a party call to Mr. VB, and to include Mr. Avery. Because when a girl out here receives a visit from a man it's of party proportions!" As she was leaving, she asked, "Why don't you come down to the dance Friday night?" "A big event?" "Surely!" She laughed merrily. "It's the first one since spring, and everybody'll be there. Mr. Avery will surely come. Won't you, too, Mr. VB?" He evaded her, but when she had turned the automobile about and sped down the road, homeward bound, he let down the bars for youth's romanticism and knew that he would dance with her if it meant walking every one of the twenty-two miles to the schoolhouse. For the first time in years VB felt a thrill at the anticipation of a social function, and with it a guilty little thought kept buzzing in the depths of his mind. The thought was: Is her hair as fragrant as it is glorious in color and texture?