Angela lightly thanked her knight for his services and bade him wait on the veranda while she put on her jacket and hat.  A minute later she came out again, ready for breakfast; and now, having a mind released from buttons, she saw that Nick was good to look upon in his khaki riding-clothes.

“Am I all right?” she inquired modestly.

“Better than all right,” he allowed himself to answer.

“I do think this hat of Hawaiian straw is a success.  And you—­well, I’m rather proud of my trail guide.  Used you to dress like that in your cowboy days?”

Nick laughed.  “Great Scot, no!  I’d have been in rags in no time.  Didn’t you ever see a cowpuncher’s ’shaps’?”

“No; I don’t even know what they are.  Have you kept your cowboy things?”

“Oh, yes.  They’re knocking around somewhere.  I have to put them on once in a while.”

“If I accept your invitation to come and see your place, will you ’dress up’ in them?”

“Of course, if it’d please you.  But I’d feel a fool rigging myself out just to show off, like an actor.”

“Yet, that’s the bribe you’ll have to offer if you want me to pay you a visit.”

“It’s settled then.  I hope the moths haven’t got my ‘shaps’ since I had ’em on last.”

They both laughed and went to breakfast.  What a good world it was!  Angela told Nick the tale of the mysterious apparition of a beauteous “nighty,” and wondered how she could ever have felt unhappy, or depressingly grown up.

The others who were going to Mirror Lake were almost ready to start, and the “buckboard” which was to take Nick and Angela had come to the hotel door.  But these two, at all times small eaters, were exhilarated by the wine of life, and a little milk and bread sufficed them.  They did not keep the party waiting, and so they were regarded with favour—­the handsome young man and the lovely girl about whose relations to each other people were quite good-naturedly speculating.  Angela saw that she was regarded with interest, and that eyes turned from her to Nick.  But she was “only Mrs. May, whom nobody knows.”  After the drive on the buckboard she and Nick would be separating from the rest.  That night, at Glacier Point, she would find Kate, already arrived from El Portal; and then she would never see any of these pleasant questioning-eyed young people again.  The most reckless part of the adventure would be over with this day—­and she was rather sorry.  After all, she did not much regret the wave of fate which had swept her and her maid-chaperon temporarily apart.  There was a certain piquancy in travelling alone with this knight-errant.