Marion placed a cone at a point on the chart which was marked Greenville, aimed for Spring Garden and landed the cone neatly in the middle of Jack's belt. "Missed the pocket a mile," he taunted grudgingly, hating to be pleasant and yet helpless against the girl's perfect composure and good humor. "Give it back, and I'll try it again. There's a place called the Pocket. I'll try that, for luck." Then she added carelessly--"What would have happened, if you hadn't answered that man at all?" "I'd have been canned, maybe." "Forevermore." She pretended to chalk her cue with a tiny powder puff which she took from a ridiculous vanity bag that swung from her belt. "Wouldn't you kind of like to be canned--under the circumstances?" "No, I wouldn't. I need the money." Jack bit his lips to keep from grinning at the powder-puff play. "Oh, I see." She tried another shot. "Why don't you cut the legs off this table? I would. It's miles too high." "I don't monkey with government property, myself." He placed a peculiar accent on the last word, thus pointing his meaning very clearly. "Now, _what_ do you know about _that_? Missed it--with a government cone, shot by a government stick on a government table, while a government scowl fairly shrieks: 'Cut out this desecration!'" She chalked her cue gravely, powdered her nose afterward, using a round scrap of a mirror not much bigger than a silver dollar. "Do you stay up here all the time and scowl, all by yourself?" "All the time and scowl, all by myself." Jack took his hands from his pockets that he might light his pipe; which was a sign that he was nearly ready to treat the girl kindly. "If you object to smoke--" and he waved one hand significantly toward the open door. "All the time--all by yourself. And you don't want to be canned, either." With the pointer Marion drew aimless little invisible volutes upon the map, connecting the two spruce cones with an imaginary scroll design. "How touching!" she said enigmatically. "Sure, you're heart-broken over the pathos of it. I can see that. You ought to put in about a week here--that's all I've got to say." "Think I couldn't?" She looked across at him queerly. "You wouldn't dare go any farther away than the spring. You'd have to stay right here on this peak every minute of the twenty-four hours. They call up at all kinds of ungodly times, just to see if you're on the job, if they think you're snitching. They'd catch you gone sometime--you couldn't get by with it--and then--" "The can," finished Miss Marion gravely. "But what I want to know is, what have you done?" "Done?" Jack's jaw dropped slack away from the pipestem. "What yuh mean, done?" "Yes. What have you done that they should put you up here and make you stay up here? It sounds--" "Now, even a tourist knows that this is a Forest Service lookout station, and that I'm here to watch out for fires down below! I'm your guardian angel, young lady. Treat me with respect, if not with kindness."