he went on, ‘I’ll get all you want.’  ’Indeed they do,’ I said, ‘but they’re not yours, are they?’ ’No, ma’am, they’re yourn,’ he said.  He pulled out a big knife, strode across to the bush and began cutting the poor thing all to pieces.  ‘Oh, please don’t!’ I cried.  ‘That’s more than enough!’ ‘Just as you say, ma’am,’ and he came back with a dozen great branches of them.  I took them and thanked him.  I told him it was dear of him to give them to me and I did hope he hadn’t spoiled his bush.  He—­he—­well, he emptied his mouth of a great deal of tobacco juice, wiped his big hand across it and said:  ’It ain’t my bush, ma’am, but you’re just as welcome to them lilocks as if it was.  There ain’t nothin’ in this town a pretty girl can’t have for the askin’!’ Thank goodness, the conductor cried ‘All aboard’ just then and I ran up the steps.  There wasn’t any reply I could have made to that, was there?  As the train went off we could see the other men on the platform laughing and hitting my friend on the back, and enjoying it all greatly.  But wasn’t it dear of him?”

“Yes,” answered Wade, warmly.  “They’re like that out there, though rough and uncultured, maybe, but kind and big-hearted underneath.  I dare say that incident made him feel so good that he went out and shot a Greaser.”

“Oh, I hope not!” laughed Eve.  “But he looked as though he might have shot dozens of them, one every morning for breakfast!  The flowers lasted me all the way to Chicago.  The porter put them in the ice-water tank and I picked fresh lilacs every day.”

Wade wondered whether she had forgotten another incident, which must have happened on the evening of that same day.  He hoped she had, and then he hoped she hadn’t.  If she recalled it she made no mention of it, nor did the smiling unconsciousness of her face suggest that she connected him with her trip in the remotest degree.  He felt a little bit aggrieved.  It wasn’t flattering to be forgotten so completely.

“You said your father was interested in some mines in Nevada.  Do you mind telling me the name?”

“The New Century Consolidated, they were called.”

“Oh, that was too bad,” exclaimed Wade, regretfully.  “That property never was any good.  The whole thing was a swindle from first to last.  Was your father very badly hit?”

“Ruined,” answered Eve, simply.  “He had to sell everything he had.  They had made him a director, you see, and when the exposure came he paid up his share.  The lawyer said he didn’t have to, but he insisted.  He was right, don’t you think, Mr. Herrick?”

“No—­well, perhaps.  I don’t know.  It depends how you look at it, I reckon.”

“There was only one way to look at it, wasn’t there?  Either it was right or it was wrong.  Father believed it was right.”

“So it was!  But plenty of men would have hidden behind the law.  I wish your father might have bought into our property instead of the New Century.  I wanted Ed to write to him; we needed money badly at first, and I’d heard Ed speak of him once; but he wouldn’t do it; said his uncle wouldn’t have anything to do with any schemes of his.”