Malcolm did not voice his reply, but she took it for granted, as he had at once reached for her satchels. She was secretly glad that her escort was middle-aged. Somehow that fact made her feel more at ease. When they had crossed the city in the jolting, rattling omnibus, and the girl, at last, was comfortably seated in the luxurious chair car, Malcolm said, “I will leave you now, Miss Selover, but at noon I will come for you and we will lunch together.” When he was gone Margaret watched the flying landscape without seeing it. This man, she thought, was evidently a middle-aged rancher, and yet he spoke English as correctly as any of the boys she knew. She had not supposed such a thing possible. How she wished that he were her guardian, instead of that illiterate Mr. Davis who had written such unkind letters to her, and who had unjustly deprived her of her rightful allowance. She just hated him and she always would. Two hours later her reverie was interrupted by the decidedly pleasant voice of her escort who was telling her that he would accompany her to the diner. Malcolm was thoroughly enjoying this strange new experience and yet there were moments when he wished that he might snatch off his disguise and tell the whole truth to the girl, who, now and then turned toward him such wistful brown eyes, but he would wait and let Virginia decide when to make the revelation. CHAPTER VIII THE ARRIVAL OF MARGARET Virginia was up before the sun on the day that she was expecting the arrival of her brother and his rebellious ward. “I’m so interested and excited,” she confided to Shags who trotted along at her side when she went down to what Rusty Pete called “the hen corral” to feed the plump biddies that resided there. Promptly at nine o’clock they were to depart for Silver Creek Junction, at which lonely station the trains would stop, when flagged, or when passengers had so requested. Poor Uncle Tex, dressed in a linen suit and wearing a wide panama hat, was miserably uncomfortable, and, as he stood at the window in the big living-room, he looked longingly toward the distant mountains. Even yet he could escape, but if his “gal” needed his help at this play acting, he’d try to do his best, but how he did wish that he might change places with Slim, the lithe young cow-boy who at that moment was within the range of the old man’s vision endeavoring to break the wild spirits of a bucking broncho. [Illustration: Skipping to the side of the elderly man, in a manner much too frivolous for the wearer of such sombre attire.] Hearing an inner door open, he turned and beheld what might have been an elderly housekeeper in bonnet and shawl, a black bombazine dress the girl had borrowed from dear old Grandmother Slater.