"But it seems so childish and unfair. I don't like my girl to be unfair. Has he ever done anything or said anything to you that offended you?" She gave a petulant movement: "No, but he thinks so much of himself, and he's hard and has no feeling, and-- Oh, I don't know--it's just that I don't like him." David laughed: "It's all prejudice. You can't give any real reason." "Of course I can't. Those things don't always have reasons. You're always asking for reasons and I never have any to give you." "I'll have to teach you to have them." She looked slantwise at him smiling. "I'm afraid that will be a great undertaking. I'm very stupid about learning things. You ask father and Daddy John what a terrible task it was getting me educated. The only person that didn't bother about it was this one"--she laid a finger on her chest-- "She never cared in the least." "Well I'll begin a second education. When we get settled I'll teach you to reason." "Begin now." She folded her hands demurely in her lap and lifting her head back laughed: "Here I am waiting to learn." "No. We want more time. I'll wait till we're married." Her laughter diminished to a smile that lay on her lips, looking stiff and uncomfortable below the fixity of her eyes. "That's such a long way off," she said faintly. "Not so very long." "Oh, California's hundreds of miles away yet. And then when we get there we've got to find a place to settle, and till the land, and lay out the garden and build a house, quite a nice house; I don't want to live in a cabin. Father and I have just been talking about it. Why it's months and months off yet." He did not answer. She had spoken this way to him before, wafting the subject away with evasive words. After a pause he said slowly: "Why need we wait so long?" "We must. I'm not going to begin my married life the way the emigrant women do. I want to live decently and be comfortable." He broke a sprig off a sage bush and began to pluck it apart. She had receded to her defenses and peeped nervously at him from behind them. "Fort Bridger," he said, his eyes on the twig, "is a big place, a sort of rendezvous for all kinds of people." She stared at him, her face alert with apprehension, ready to dart into her citadel and lower the drawbridge. "Sometimes there are missionaries stopping there." "Missionaries?" she exclaimed in a high key. "I hate missionaries!" This was a surprising statement. David knew the doctor to be a supporter and believer in the Indian missions, and had often heard his daughter acquiesce in his opinions. "Why do you hate them?" "I don't know. There's another thing you want a reason for. It's getting cold up here--let's go down by the fire."