“It’s easy enough to talk,” remarked Clarence, gloomily, as he gathered up the bridles of the horses; “but I shall do nothing of the kind.  I declare I won’t!”

CHAPTER X.

NO. 13 PIUTE STREET.

Clover did not see Clarence again for several days after this conversation, the remembrance of which was uncomfortable to her.  She feared he was feeling hurt or “huffy,” and would show it in his manner; and she disliked very much the idea that Phil might suspect the reason, or, worse still, Mr. Templestowe.

But when he finally appeared he seemed much the same as usual.  After all, she reflected, it has only been a boyish impulse; he has already got over it, or not meant all he said.

In this she did Clarence an injustice.  He had been very much in earnest when he spoke; and it showed the good stuff which was in him and his real regard for Clover that he should be making so manly a struggle with his disappointment and pain.  His life had been a lonely one in Colorado; he could not afford to quarrel with his favorite cousin, and with him, as with other lovers, there may have been, besides, some lurking hope that she might yet change her mind.  But perhaps Clover in a measure was right in her conviction that Clarence was still too young and undeveloped to have things go very deep with him.  He seemed to her in many ways as boyish and as undisciplined as Phil.

With early September the summering of the Ute Park came to a close.  The cold begins early at that elevation, and light frosts and red leaves warned the dwellers in tents and cabins to flee.

Clover made her preparations for departure with real reluctance.  She had grown very fond of the place; but Phil was perfectly himself again, and there seemed no reason for their staying longer.

So back to St. Helen’s they went and to Mrs. Marsh, who, in reply to Clover’s letter, had written that she must make room for them somehow, though for the life of her she couldn’t say how.  It proved to be in two small back rooms.  An irruption of Eastern invalids had filled the house to overflowing, and new faces met them at every turn.  Two or three of the last summer’s inmates had died during their stay,—­one of them the very sick man whose room Mrs. Watson had coveted.  His death took place “as if on purpose,” she told Clover, the very week after her removal to the Shoshone.

Mrs. Watson herself was preparing for return to the East.  “I’ve seen the West now,” she said,—­“all I want to see; and I’m quite ready to go back to my own part of the country.  Ellen writes that she thinks I’d better start for home so as to get settled before the cold—­And it’s so cold here that I can’t realize that they’re still in the middle of peaches at home.  Ellen always spices a great—­They’re better than preserves; and as for the canned ones, why, peaches and water is what I call them.  Well—­my dear—­”