“I shall see you very soon,” said Geoff, on the other side.  “Clarence is not coming without me, I can assure you.”

Then the carriage drove away; and the two partners went back into the house, which looked suddenly empty and deserted.

“I’ll tell you what!” began Clarence.

“And I’ll tell you what!” rejoined Geoff.

“A house isn’t worth a red cent which hasn’t a woman in it.”

“You might ride down and ask Miss Perkins to step up and adorn our lives,” said his friend, grimly.  Miss Perkins was a particularly rigid spinster who taught a school six miles distant, and for whom Clarence entertained a particular distaste.

“You be hanged!  I don’t mean that kind.  I mean—­”

“The nice kind, like Mrs. Hope and your cousin.  Well, I’m agreed.”

“I shall go down after the mail to-morrow,” remarked Clarence, between the puffs of his pipe.

“So shall I.”

“All right; come along!” But though the words sounded hearty, the tone rather belied them.  Clarence was a little puzzled by and did not quite like this newborn enthusiasm on the part of his comrade.

CHAPTER IX.

OVER A PASS.

True to their resolve, the young heads of the High Valley Ranch rode together to St. Helen’s next day,—­ostensibly to get their letters; in reality to call on their late departed guests.  They talked amicably as they went; but unconsciously each was watching the other’s mood and speech.  To like the same girl makes young men curiously observant of each other.

A disappointment was in store for them.  They had taken it for granted that Clover would be as disengaged and as much at their service as she had been in the valley; and lo! she sat on the piazza with a knot of girls about her, and a young man in an extremely “fetching” costume of snow-white duck, with a flower in his button-hole, was bending over her chair, and talking in a low voice of something which seemed of interest.  He looked provokingly cool and comfortable to the dusty horsemen, and very much at home.  Phil, who lounged against the piazza-rail opposite, dispensed an enormous and meaning wink at his two friends as they came up the steps.

Clover jumped up from her chair, and gave them a most cordial reception.

“How delightful to see you again so soon!” she said.  Then she introduced them to a girl in pink and a girl in blue as Miss Perham and Miss Blanchard, and they shook hands with Marian Chase, whom they already knew, and lastly were presented to Mr. Wade, the youth in white.  The three young men eyed one another with a not very friendly scrutiny, just veiled by the necessary outward politeness.

“Then you will be all ready for Thursday,—­and your brother too, of course,—­and my mother will stop for you at half-past ten on her way down,” they heard him say.  “Miss Chase will go with the Hopes.  Oh, yes; there will be plenty of room.  No danger about that.  We’re almost sure to have good weather too.  Good-morning.  I’m so glad you enjoyed the roses.”