"So you were looking out of the window, too, were you? You are a close observer and a good guesser. That was Mac, and--yes, he will probably make faces at you. He can't help it any more than he can help breathing." Miss Brewster was running her fingers along the hand-rail as if it were the key-board of a piano. "You say you don't know how long you will be away?" she asked. "No; but probably not more than the night. I was only providing for the unexpected, which some people say is what always happens." "Will your run take you as far as the Timanyoni Canyon?" "Yes; through it, and some little distance beyond." "You have just said that we are to ask for what we want. Did you mean it?" "Surely," he replied unguardedly. "Then we may as well begin at once," she said coolly; and turning quickly to the others: "O all you people; listen a minute, will you? Hush, Carolyn! What do you say to a moonlight ride through one of the grandest canyons in the West in Mr. Lidgerwood's car? It will be something to talk about as long as you live. Don't all speak at once, please." But they did. There was an instant and enthusiastic chorus of approval, winding up rather dolefully, however, with Miss Doty's, "But your mother will never consent to it, Eleanor!" "Mr. Lidgerwood will never consent, you mean," put in Miriam Holcombe quietly. Lidgerwood said what he might without being too crudely inhospitable. His car was entirely at the service of the president's party, of course, but it was not very commodious compared with the _Nadia_. Moreover, he was going on a business trip, and at the end of it he would have to leave them for an hour or two, or maybe longer. Moreover, again, if they got tired they would have to sleep as they could, though possibly his state-room in the service-car might be made to accommodate the three young women. All this he said, hoping and believing that Mrs. Brewster would not only refuse to go herself but would promptly veto an unchaperoned excursion. But this was one time when his distantly related kinswoman disappointed him. Mrs. Brewster, cajoled by her daughter, yielded a reluctant consent, going to the car door to tell Lidgerwood that she would hold him responsible for the safe return of the trippers. "See, now, how fatally easy it is for one to promise more--oh, so very much more!--than one has any idea of performing," murmured the president's daughter, dropping out to walk beside the victim when the party trooped down the long platform of the Crow's Nest to the service-car. And when he did not reply: "Please don't be grumpy." "It was the maddest notion!" he protested. "Whatever made you suggest it?" "More churlishness?" she said reproachfully. And then, with ironical sentiment: "There was a time when you would have moved heaven and earth for a chance to take me somewhere with you, Howard." "To be with you; yes, that is true. But----"