"Howdy," Bob soberly put out his hand. "My whole name is Bob Hart, this county, sir; and my home is known as Flat Rock--also at your service!" The mountaineer thanked the Colonel with one perfunctory word, said "Howdy" to Bob, then stepped out to Lucy who gave another low whinny of welcome and rubbed her nose fondly into his hand. But something seemed to be weighing heavily on his mind; his brows were contracted, his head inclined in thought; and at last, having apparently worked it out, he turned to them, announcing simply: "This is Lucy!" "Howdy," said Bob, still keeping an impassive face. There came another moment of thought. Then: "I'm Dale Dawson, of Sunlight Patch, in the mountings, suh." He said this in so clever an imitation of their own introductions that it seemed a caricature. "_Chapeaux bas!_" the Colonel murmured, throwing Jane into the most unlady-like fit of giggles. "Where did it come from?" Bob asked later. He was riding with her a hundred yards behind the buggy that held the Colonel and Dale, the old rifle sticking out at the back like a bean pole. "A heaven-sent deliverer," she quietly answered. "I appreciate that," he said, in a more serious vein. Her very reticence told him how deeply she had been shocked, and that it was a subject to be avoided, for the present, at least. Bob was quick to divine situations. For the moment, then, he drifted into another channel, saying with a laugh that could hardly have been called spontaneous: "If he's an example of celestial types I'll--" "Lead a different life?" she interrupted, smiling. "No such plagiarism, thank you," he retorted. "I was about to say something else!" "You've been giving Bip some most unfatherly theories about that place, by the way," she observed. "He has confided in me." "Bip," Bob quietly remarked, with an oozing pride in the subject of his six-year-old son, "has reached the age of embarrassing questions." "And is being fed unpardonable answers," she said. "Between old Aunt Timmie's declaration that it'll smell like heliotrope and taste like possum the year 'round, and Uncle Zack swearing it's just a big race track where everybody's horse will win, and doubtless the Colonel's word for it that it's a perpetual spring flowing with ice-cold mint juleps, I quite despair of the child's salvation. How have you been picturing it?" "I passed that on," he ruefully admitted. "You and Ann can tackle it." "I wasn't home this afternoon at his lesson time. Did he miss me?" "Miss you! Ann says he went to your room about five o'clock, and then came running to her saying something had happened to you. She was quite a while getting him settled. And then, much shame to us, we realized you'd not got back. I drove over to the Colonel's really expecting you had stopped there." After a brief pause he asked: "Was that fellow much unruly? I wouldn't disturb you about it, but think you ought to tell us."