“A fellow hates to get turned down,” Robin observed. “You’re a big, strange toad in the puddle--oh, darn it, I didn’t mean that.” “It’s a perfectly proper simile,” she hastened to assure him. “I know what you mean. I am. But no one need be afraid of splashing me. I like to dance. I like fun as well as any other girl in these hills.” “I expect you do,” Robin somehow found it easy to talk to her. “But you cut a lot of ice in this country, or your dad does, and it’s the same thing. I expect after the kind of dances you’re used to and the people you’ve lived among this don’t exactly look like no Fourth of July celebration to you. A cow-puncher may be wild and woolly but he’s no fool. He knows when he’s outclassed--as far as a girl is concerned.” “You are a rather wide-awake young man in some respects,” she said thoughtfully. Then after a momentary silence she changed the subject. “Who is the pretty little dark-haired girl you brought?” “That’s Ivy Mayne.” “Oh, so that’s Ivy. She doesn’t seem to know me. Well, I don’t suppose she would.” “You know Ivy?” Robin pricked up his ears. He had never heard Ivy so much as mention May Sutherland. “Why, we began school together right here in this room. At least I had been going a couple of years when Ivy commenced. There were only six pupils. I attended this school until I was twelve. Then I went away to boarding school.” “Were you two chummy at all?” Robin inquired. May wrinkled her brows slightly. “It seems to me we agreed to disagree on various occasions,” she replied. “I was a good deal of a spitfire in those days. If I remember correctly I used to flare up and then Ivy would sulk. What silly things girls do when they’re kids,” she laughed reminiscently. “I shouldn’t have known her. She’s awfully good looking, isn’t she? Perfect features and beautiful eyes. How has she escaped capture here in the Bear Paws where there are six men for every woman? Dad says no schoolteacher has ever taught more than a single term. They always get married. How has Ivy kept her freedom?” “Hard to catch, I guess,” Robin made a noncommittal reply. He did not say that he had tentatively captured Ivy. Here, to-night, for the first time in the six months they had been formally engaged he had a doubt of his capture being complete. And besides that doubt he did not want to talk about Ivy Mayne to this fair-haired girl who floated in his clasp light as a feather.