Thurston's face turned red. But presently he forgot everything in his amazement, for Mona the dignified, Mona of the scornful eyes and the chilly smile, actually giggled--giggled like any ordinary girl, and shot him a glance that had in it pure mirth and roguish teasing, and a dash of coquetry. He sat down and giggled with her, feeling idiotically happy and for no reason under the sun that he could name. He had promised his conscience that he would go home to the Lazy Eight in the morning, but he didn't; he somehow contrived, overnight, to invent a brand new excuse for his conscience to swallow or not, as it liked. Hank Graves had the same privilege; as for the Stevens trio, he blessed their hospitable souls for not wanting any excuse whatever for his staying. They were frankly glad to have him there; at least Mrs. Stevens and Jack were. As for Mona, he was not so sure, but he hoped she didn't mind. This was the reason inspired by his great desire: he was going to write a story, and Mona was unconsciously to furnish the material for his heroine, and so, of course, he needed to be there so that he might study his subject. That sounded very well, to himself, but to Hank Graves, for some reason, it seemed very funny. When Thurston told him, Hank was taken with a fit of strangling that turned his face a dark purple. Afterward he explained brokenly that something had got down his Sunday throat--and Thurston, who had never heard of a man's Sunday throat, eyed him with suspicion. Hank blinked at him with tears still in his quizzical eyes and slapped him on the back, after the way of the West--and any other enlightened country where men are not too dignified to be their real selves--and drawled, in a way peculiar to himself: “That's all right, Bud. You stay right here as long as yuh want to. I don't blame yuh--if I was you I'd want to spend a lot uh time studying this particular brand uh female girl myself. She's out uh sight, Bud--and I don't believe any uh the boys has got his loop on her so far; though I could name a dozen or so that would be tickled to death if they had. You just go right ahead and file your little, old claim--” “You're getting things mixed,” Thurston interrupted, rather testily. “I'm not in love with her. I, well, it's like this: if you were going to paint a picture of those mountains off there, you'd want to be where you could look at them--wouldn't you? You wouldn't necessarily want to--to own them, just because you felt they'd make a fine picture. Your interest would be, er, entirely impersonal.” “Uh-huh,” Hank agreed, his keen eyes searching Phil's face amusedly. “Therefore, it doesn't follow that I'm getting foolish about a girl just because I--hang it! what the Dickens makes you look at a fellow that way? You make me?”