So Judith went to the nuns to school, and stayed with them till she was eighteen.  Mrs. Atkins would have adopted her then; but Judith by this time knew her family history in all its sordid ramifications, and felt that duty called her to her brother, who had not improved his unfortunate start in life, though his step-mother did not spoil him for the staying of the rod.

VII

Chugg Takes The Ribbons

Chugg, comforted with liquids and stayed with a head-plaster, presented himself at the Dax ranch just twenty-four hours after he was due.  His mien combined vagueness with hostility, and he harnessed up the stage that Peter Hamilton had driven over the day before, when his prospective passengers were looking, with a graphic pantomimic representation of “take it or leave it.”  Under the circumstances, Miss Carmichael and the fat lady consented to be passengers with much the same feeling of finality that one might have on embarking for the planet Mars in an air-ship.

There was, furthermore, a suggestion of last rites in the farewells of the Daxes, each according to their respective personalities, that was far from reassuring.

“Here’s some bread and meat and a bottle of cold coffee, if you live to need it,” was Mrs. Dax’s grim prognostication of accident.  Leander, being of an emotional nature, could scarce restrain his tears—­the advent of the travellers had created a welcome variation in the monotony of his dutiful routine—­he felt all the agitation of parting with life-long friends.  Mary Carmichael and Judith promised to write—­they had found a great deal to say to each other the preceding evening.

Chugg cracked his whip ominously, the travellers got inside, not daring to trust themselves to the box.

The journey with the misanthrope was but a repetition of that first day’s staging—­the sage-brush was scarcer, the mountains seemed as far off as ever, and the outlook was, if possible, more desolate.  The entry in Miss Carmichael’s diary, inscribed in malformed characters as the stage jolted over ruts and gullies, reads:  “I do not mind telling you, in strictest confidence, ’Dere Diary’—­as the little boy called you—­that when I so lightly severed my connection with civilization, I had no idea to what an extent I was going in for the prairie primeval.  How on earth does a woman who can write a letter like Mrs. Yellett stand it?  And where on the map of North America is Lost Trail?”

“Land sakes!” regretted the fat lady, “but I do wish I had a piece of that ‘boy’s favorite’ cake that I had for my lunch the day we left town.  I just ate and ate it ’cause I hadn’t another thing to do.  If I hadn’t been so greedy I could offer him a piece, just to show him that some women folk have kind hearts, and that the whole sect ain’t like that Pink.”

“Boy’s favorite,” as adequate compensation for shattered ideals, a broken heart, and the savings of a lifetime, seemed to Mary Carmichael inadequate compensation, but she forbore to express her sentiments.