Angela shook her head.  “I don’t want to buy them.  Do you think—­I could find—­a—­a—­nighty?”

“A ’nighty’?”

“A nightgown.  You see, I’ve just remembered—­the cascades and mountains made me forget—­my dressing-bag was left behind with Kate.  I’ve a frock or two, and the new khaki things for to-morrow, in my suit-case, but—­nothing else.  Brushes and combs and so on, I can get here I’m sure.  But—­would the shops—­if any—­run to nighties?”

“No,” said Nick, gloomily.  “I’m afraid they wouldn’t, anyhow not the sort that deserves a nice pet name like that.  But—­I’ll get you one.”

“You can’t,” said Angela.  “You can’t create a ‘nighty’ or call it from the vasty deep.”

“That’s what I mean to do:  call one from the vasty deep; hook it up like a rare fish.”

She laughed.  “What bait will you use?”

“I don’t know yet.  But I’m going to find out.  And you shall have the ‘nighty,’ as you call it, by the time you want it.”

“You’d better not pledge yourself.”

“I do.  I’ve failed you often enough since we started!  I won’t fail this time, you’ll see.  The thing you want must exist somewhere within a radius of ten miles, and I’m going to lasso it.”

“But you didn’t engage as a lassoer of nighties.  You engaged as trail guide.”

“If anything is wanted along the trail, why then it’s the business of the trail guide to get it.  Don’t you worry about your arrangements, Mrs. May.”

“I don’t.  Meanwhile, I may find some kind of a garment lurking on a forgotten shelf of the candy-drugs-grocery shop.”

“If you do, it wouldn’t be worthy of you.  But you can try,” said Nick dubiously.  And after a late luncheon, she did try, in vain.  Other necessaries were forthcoming, but nighties were things that you had to bring into the Yosemite Valley, it would seem, or do without.  Angela said nothing of her failure.  She supposed that Nick would forget her plight if she made little of it; but she did not know him thoroughly yet.  They took a walk, and the momentous subject was not mentioned:  nevertheless, it pressed upon Nick’s thoughts.  As he talked, the “nighty” that was not, and must be, weighed upon his mind as heavily as though it were a coat of mail instead of the gossamer creation he imagined.

“Now I’ve got to concentrate and figure out what’s trumps,” he said to himself, when Angela had gone to rest before dinner.  “I’ve dealt myself a mighty queer card, but there’s no good bluffing in this game.”

The desired garment declared itself even to the untrained masculine intelligence as a dainty and dreamlike thing, which, to deserve its name and be worthy of a fastidious wearer, must be delicate as the outer petals of a white rose.

How then to obtain for this despoiled goddess such a marvel in a remote village, lost among Yosemite forests?  There was the rub; a vaguely groping “rub” with no Aladdin’s lamp to match.