“Vancouver? Oh, bully!” she cried. “I know lots of people in Vancouver. Do you know anyone? No! Then I’ll give you introductions to some swell people. They are Asa’s friends.” “I shan’t have time for many friends. I must work,” said Paul. “Oh, shucks!” cried Adelina. “Every fellow needs friends to get on.” Paul set a grim mouth. “I shall get on,” he said. Adelina’s eyes showed their admiration, but her words scorned him for his independence. “Get every friend you can and use him all you can, that’s my theory. Why shouldn’t I? I’m ready to help my friends,” said this worldly wise young lady. “By the way, have you heard anything of the Pelhams? Of Peg?” “No,” said Paul, looking away across the valley. “They are in England, I hear.” “Yes, have been for a year. Before that Peg was in school in England for years and years. She is awfully pretty, no end of a swell, and engaged to be married.” In spite of all his self-control Paul’s hands tightened on his reins so that his horse came to a full stop. “Go on, you brute,” he said, angry at himself. “Young a bit for that, isn’t she?” he said in a voice which he strove to make casual. “Young? Dear boy, don’t you know that she is just two years younger than you or I? She is a finished young lady.” Paul turned this over in his mind as an astounding bit of information. Peg as a young lady, as one whom a man might desire to marry, was something not only amazing but quite disturbing. “Is she—are the Pelhams coming back home soon?” he inquired, his mind occupied with the picture of a little girl standing in the moonlight, looking up at him and whispering, “I won’t ever forget, Paul.” “This winter they come back, I think. At least, if Peg doesn’t get married,” said Adelina, her shrewd eyes searching his face and reading it like an open book. Paul caught the look, resented it, and closed the open book. But he would talk no more of the Pelhams or of their plans. He listened instead, or appeared to listen, to Adelina’s chatter about Vancouver and the possibilities of a gay life in that young and ambitious city, till they came to the Pine Croft drive. “You are not listening to me a bit, Paul,” she said, with a pout. “You are thinking of Peg I know,” with a gay laugh, “but you might as well put her out of your mind.” “Yes,” said Paul gravely, “I might as well put her out of my mind, and every other girl, as far as that is concerned.” He pulled up his horse sharply and swinging his arm to include in its sweep the Pine Croft Ranch, he said with a touch of bitterness in his tone, “I have to make twenty thousand dollars to buy back all that, before I think of anything else.” “Buy back? From whom, Paul?” “From—why, don’t you know?—from your father, Adelina.” A gleam came into Adelina’s eyes. “No, I did not know, Paul. I don’t know anything about your affairs. But why that first?”