They had nearly half an hour together she and Nick before Mrs. Kenealy returned, and in that time they had come close to the beginning of a friendship, each being secretly in need of sympathy, and dimly detecting the need in the other.  Their liking for one another enchanted Mrs. Kenealy, who was a born matchmaker.  To be sure, Miss Sara Wilkins was not pretty, and would never see twenty-nine again, but she was a good girl, clever and affectionate, and would make Nick Hilliard the best of wives if only he could be brought to see it.  She sat between them, chattily telling each one nice things about the other, and soon she suggested bringing Miss Wilkins to visit Nick’s ranch.  School was off now, and the poor dear had nothing to do but read and write letters home, whither it cost far too much to return for only a few weeks.  Nick said that he would be delighted; and offered to send Miss Wilkins as many books as she liked to her boarding house.  Books were great friends of his, he admitted somewhat shyly.  She was welcome to borrow any she cared to have.

They saw a good deal of each other during the next fortnight, too much for the school-teacher’s peace of mind; for the oftener they met the more was she convinced that Nick was in love, perhaps hopelessly in love, with another woman as different from herself as a lily from a dusty sprig of lavender.  Then, one day when Nick had started to carry her some books and they had met on the way, the two sat down and talked by the side of the blue, brackish lake, sheltering from the sun behind a bank of yellow sand that was like the high back of a queerly shaped throne.  At a distance passed Green, the landlord of the Eureka, out walking with his little daughter, and in speaking of him and the odd folk who stopped at the green hotel the “Dook” was mentioned.  He had disappeared from Lucky Star City some time before, but Miss Wilkins had met and disliked him.

“Horrid little pretentious toad!” she exclaimed sharply.  “He was always talking to every one he could get hold of about his family and his swell friends and Oxford.  But I don’t believe any of his stories.  He was just worse than nobody at all; and East I’ve met real nice Englishmen who had a lovely accent, and wouldn’t be found dead drawling like he did.”

Nick laughed.  “You’re jolly right,” he said; and then being in a humorous as well as confidential mood, he told the story of himself and Montagu Jerrold.

“Wasn’t I a Johnny?” he asked at the end.  “Served me right for trying to make a silk purse of myself.  Can’t be done, I guess.”

“But you are a silk purse!” Sara protested indignantly.  “How can you talk about yourself the way you do?”

“I’m a little down on my luck these days,” he answered.  “Did you ever read about the moth who loved a star?  I guess, when that moth got to thinking of himself and his chances, he saw himself pretty well as he really was, poor old chap.  Fusty brown wings, too many legs, antennae the wrong shape, and a clumsy way of usin’ ’em.  I’ve gone and made a moth of myself, Miss Wilkins.”