“It's all very well to talk of her going away! But she WON'T. You have made her like you--yes! like you better than me--than any of us! She says you're the only one who ever treated her like a mother--as a mother should be treated. She says she never knew what peace and comfort were until she came to you. There! Don't stare like that! Don't you understand? Don't you see? Must I tell you again that she is strange--that--that she was ALWAYS queer and strange--and queerer on account of her unfortunate habits--surely you knew THEM, Mr. Riggs! She quarreled with us all. I went to live with my aunt, and she took herself off to San Francisco with a silly claim against my father's shipowners. Heaven only knows how she managed to live there; but she always impressed people with her manners, and some one always helped her! At last I begged my aunt to let me seek her, and I tracked her here. There! If you've confessed everything to me, you have made me confess everything to you, and about my own mother, too! Now, what is to be done?” “Whatever is agreeable to you is the same to me, Miss Pottinger,” he said formally. “But you mustn't call me 'Miss Pottinger' so loud. Somebody might hear you,” she returned mischievously. “All right--'cousin,' then,” he said, with a prodigious blush. “Supposin' we go in.” In spite of the camp's curiosity, for the next few days they delicately withheld their usual evening visits to Prossy's mother. “They'll be wantin' to talk o' old times, and we don't wanter be too previous,” suggested Wynbrook. But their verdict, when they at last met the new cousin, was unanimous, and their praises extravagant. To their inexperienced eyes she seemed to possess all her aunt's gentility and precision of language, with a vivacity and playfulness all her own. In a few days the whole camp was in love with her. Yet she dispensed her favors with such tactful impartiality and with such innocent enjoyment--free from any suspicion of coquetry--that there were no heartburnings, and the unlucky man who nourished a fancied slight would have been laughed at by his fellows. She had a town-bred girl's curiosity and interest in camp life, which she declared was like a “perpetual picnic,” and her slim, graceful figure halting beside a ditch where the men were working seemed to them as grateful as the new spring sunshine. The whole camp became tidier; a coat was considered de rigueur at “Prossy's mother” evenings; there was less horseplay in the trails, and less shouting. “It's all very well to talk about 'old mothers,'” said the cynical barkeeper, “but that gal, single handed, has done more in a week to make the camp decent than old Ma'am Riggs has in a month o' Sundays.”