Yet the couple minded not the observant tourist, and continued to enlarge and complicate his views of American life to the very bank of the Missouri.  Unwittingly, however, for they knew him not nor saw him nor heard him, being occupied with the matter of themselves.

“You’ll have to back me up when we get to Springfield,” he said to her one late afternoon, when they neared the end of their exciting journey.  “I’ve heard that old Grandpa Corson is mighty peppery.  He might take you away from me.”

Her eyes came in from the brown rolling of the plain outside to light him with their love; and then, the lamps having not yet been lighted, the head of grace nestled suddenly on its pillow of brawn with only a little tremulous sigh of security for answer.

This brought his arm quickly about her in a protecting clasp, plainly in the sidelong gaze of the now scandalised but not less observant tourist.

THE END.