Bennington thought this very high-minded on the part of Old Mizzou.

“Very well,” he agreed, “I’ll write Bishop.”

“Oh, no,” put in the miner hastily, “no need to trouble.  I resigns in writin’, of course; an’ I sees to it myself.”

“Well, then, if you’ll help me with the assessment work, when shall we begin?”

“C’yant jest now,” reflected Old Mizzou, “’cause, as I tells you, I wants to do some work of my own.  A’ter th’ Pioneer’s Picnic, I reckons.”

The Pioneer’s Picnic seemed to limit many things.

Bennington shipped the ore East, tabulated the statistics, and wrote his report.  About two weeks later he received a letter from Bishop saying that the assay of the samples had been very poor—­not at all up to expectations—­and asking some further information.  As to the latter, Bennington consulted Old Mizzou.  The miner said, “I told you so,” and helped on the answer.  After this the young man heard nothing further from his employer.  As no more checks came from the East, he found himself with nothing to do.

For four afternoons, as has been said, he fruitlessly haunted the Rock.  On the fifth morning he met the girl on horseback.  She was quite the same as at first, and they resumed their old relations as if the fatal picnic had never taken place.  In a very few days they were as intimate as though they had known each other for years.

Bennington read to her certain rewritten parts of Aliris:  A Romance of all Time, which would have been ridiculous to any but these two.  They saw it through the glamour of youth; for, in spite of her assertions of great age, the girl, too, felt the whirl of that elixir in her veins.  You see, he was twenty-one and she was twenty:  magic years, more venerable than threescore and ten.  She gave him sympathy, which was just what he needed for the sake of his self-confidence and development, just the right thing for him in that effervescent period which is so necessary a concomitant of growth.  The young business man indulges in a hundred wild schemes, to be corrected by older heads.  The young artist paints strange impressionism, stranger symbolism, and perhaps a strangest other-ism, before at last he reaches the medium of his individual genius.  The young writer thinks deep and philosophical thoughts which he expresses in measured polysyllabic language; he dreams wild dreams of ideal motive, which he sets forth in beautiful allegorical tales full of imagery; and he delights in Rhetoric—­flower-crowned, flashing-eyed, deep-voiced Rhetoric, whom he clasps to his heart and believes to be true, although the whole world declares her to be false; and then, after a time, he decides not to introduce a new system of metaphysics, but to tell a plain story plainly.  Ah, it is a beautiful time to those who dwell in it, and such a funny time to those who do not!