Her father, too, was strangely affected by the fact that we had passed the State boundary line, and abandoned his game, which I discovered to have been named after a famous Boston confection called Black Jack, and stood upon the rear platform in company with other returning native sons, all looking eagerly at--something! The brown grass was all I saw. As for Richard, the chauffeur, he had shed the last vestige of his servitude and he, too, seemed looking at something--something very beautiful. And then all at once I realized what it was. When California is wet she is green and they were looking at her through a veil of happy tears that transfigured the landscape. I ventured, most delicately, to intimate my understanding to Peaches, when to my amazement, she turned on me with a laugh. "Think I want to see it green?" she said. "Why, it's just as beautiful when it's brown! Just as much home, just as big and bountiful and full of promise. Want to see it green? When the time comes. But do you always want New England to be green? Don't you ever want to see it white? Well!" I thought then that I understood, but I didn't. Not until long after. But as I stood beside her, abashed, a gentleman whose acquaintance I had made when he first got on the train the evening before, and with whom I had had a most pleasant and innocent chat without either of us revealing our names, approached us with an expression of surprise. "Peaches!" he exclaimed, flushing up to the roots of his thin gray hair. "How are you!" "Mr. Markheim!" said my charge in her turn astonished. "When did you get aboard?" "I'm just up from Coronado," he replied. "Got on last night! What luck to find you! What luck, what luck!" "This is Miss Talbot, my chaperon," said Peaches sweetly. "Meet Mr. Sebastian Markheim, Free." "We have already met!" he exclaimed blandly. "But I had no idea that----" "We spoke in the observation car last night," I said as primly as the awkward circumstances permitted. "Free!" exclaimed Peaches severely. "You picked him up! I tell you I'll breathe easier once I have you safely on the ranch!" IX My dear father used to maintain that true love seldom dies chiefly because it is so seldom born, which I take to be an aspersion upon the average love affair.