“I should like a porterhouse with mushrooms,” he announced promptly. “You can’t have it. You know what the doctor said.” Very peremptorily she smiled this at him. “He’s an old granny, Miss Messiter.” “You may have an egg on toast.” “Make it two,” he pleaded. “Excitement’s just like caviar to the appetite, and seeing y’u safe—” “Very well—two,” she conceded. They ate supper together in a renewal of the pleasant intimacy so delightful to both. He lay on the lounge, propped up with sofa cushions, the while he watched her deft fingers butter the toast and prepare his egg. It was surely worth while to be a convalescent, given so sweet a comrade for a nurse; and after he had moved over to the table he enjoyed immensely the gay firmness with which she denied him what was not good for him. “I’ll bet y’u didn’t have supper like this at Robbers’ Roost.” he told her, enthusiastically. “It wasn’t so bad, considering everything.” She was looking directly at him as she spoke. “Your cousin is rather a remarkable man in some ways. He manages to live on the best that can be got in tin-can land.” “Did he tell y’u he was my cousin?” he asked, slowly. “Yes, and that his name was Ned Bannister, too?” “Did that explain anything to y’u?” “It explained a great deal, but it left some things not clear yet.” “For instance?” “For one thing, the reason why you should bear the odium of his crimes. I suppose you don’t care for him, though I can see how you might in a way.” “I don’t care for him in the least, though I used to when we were boys. As to letting myself be blamed for his crimes. I did it because I couldn’t help myself. We look more or less alike, and he was cunning enough to manufacture evidence against me. We were never seen together, and so very few know that there are two Bannisters. At first I used to protest, but I gave it up. There wasn’t the least use. I could only wait for him to be captured or killed. In the meantime it didn’t make me any more popular to be a sheepman.” “Weren’t you taking a long chance of being killed first? Some one with a grudge against him might have shot you.” “They haven’t yet,” he smiled. “You might at least have told _me_ how it was,” she reproached. “I started to tell y’u that first day, but it looked so much of a fairy tale to unload that I passed it up.” “Then you ought not to blame me for thinking you what you were not.” “I don’t remember blaming y’u. The fact is I thought it awful white of y’u to do your Christian duty so thorough, me being such a miscreant,” he drawled. “You gave me no chance to think well of you.” “But yet y’u did your duty from A to Z.” “We’re not talking about my duty,” she flashed back. “My point is that you weren’t fair to me. If I thought ill of you how could I help it?” “I expaict your Kalamazoo conscience is worryin’ y’u because y’u misjudged me.” “It isn’t,” she denied instantly.