She spoke sharply and aggressively, and so evidently in answer to Cass’s unspoken indictment against her, that he was not surprised when she became more direct.

“You know you were shocked when I went to fetch that Hornsby, the coroner, after we found the dead body.”

“Hornsby wasn’t shocked,” said Cass, a little viciously.

“What do you mean?” she said, abruptly.

“You were good friends enough until”—­

“Until he insulted me just now; is that it?”

“Until he thought,” stammered Cass, “that because you were—­you know—­not so—­so—­so careful as other girls, he could be a little freer.”

“And so, because I preferred to ride a mile with him to see something real that had happened, and tried to be useful instead of looking in shop-windows in Main Street or promenading before the hotel”—­

“And being ornamental,” interrupted Cass.  But this feeble and un-Cass-like attempt at playful gallantry met with a sudden check.

Miss Porter drew herself together, and looked out of the window.  “Do you wish me to walk the rest of the way home?”

“No,” said Cass, hurriedly, with a crimson face and a sense of gratuitous rudeness.

“Then stop that kind of talk, right there!”

There was an awkward silence.  “I wish I was a man,” she said, half bitterly, half earnestly.  Cass Beard was not old and cynical enough to observe that this devout aspiration is usually uttered by those who have least reason to deplore their own femininity; and, but for the rebuff he had just received, would have made the usual emphatic dissent of our sex, when the wish is uttered by warm red lips and tender voices—­a dissent, it may be remarked, generally withheld, however, when the masculine spinster dwells on the perfection of woman.  I dare say Miss Porter was sincere, for a moment later she continued, poutingly: 

“And yet I used to go to fires in Sacramento when I was only ten years old.  I saw the theatre burnt down.  Nobody found fault with me then.”

Something made Cass ask if her father and mother objected to her boyish tastes.  The reply was characteristic if not satisfactory: 

“Object?  I’d like to see them do it!”

The direction of the road had changed.  The fickle moon now abandoned Miss Porter and sought out Cass on the front seat.  It caressed the young fellow’s silky moustache and long eyelashes, and took some of the sunburn from his cheek.

“What’s the matter with your neck?” said the girl, suddenly.

Cass looked down, blushing to find that the collar of his smart “duck” sailor shirt was torn open.  But something more than his white, soft, girlish skin was exposed; the shirt front was dyed quite red with blood from a slight cut on the shoulder.  He remembered to have felt a scratch while struggling with Hornsby.

The girl’s soft eyes sparkled.  “Let me,” she said, vivaciously.  “Do!  I’m good at wounds.  Come over here.  No—­stay there.  I’ll come over to you.”