“You know perfectly well I will,” was the sisterly rejoinder.

“How long does it take a letter to go from here to New York?”

“Five or six days, I suppose.”

Miss Travers stepped to the door, briefly told the soldier there was no answer, thanked him for waiting, and returned.

“You are not going to reply?” asked Mrs. Rayner, in amaze.

“I am not; and I inferred you did not intend to.  Now another question.  How many days have we been here?”

“Eight or nine,—­nine, it is.”

“You saw me post a letter to Mr. Van Antwerp as we left the Missouri, did you not?”

“Yes.  At least I suppose so.”

“I wrote again as soon as we got settled here, three days after that, did I not?”

“You said you did,” replied Mrs. Rayner, ungraciously.

“And you, Kate, when you are yourself have been prompt to declare that I say what I mean.  Very probably it may have been four days from the time that letter from the transfer reached Wall Street to the time the next one could get to him from here, even had I written the night we arrived.  Possibly you forget that you forbade my doing so, and sent me to bed early.  Mr. Van Antwerp has simply failed to remember that I had gone several hundred miles farther west; and even had I written on the train twice a day, the letters would not have reached him uninterruptedly.  By this time he is beginning to get them fast enough.  And as for you, Kate, you are quite as unjust as he.  It augurs badly for my future peace; and—­I am learning two lessons here, Kate.”

“What two, pray?”

“That he can be foolishly unreliable in estimating a woman.”

“And the other?”

“That you may be persistently unreliable in your judgment of a man.”

Verily, for a young woman with a sweet, girlish face, whom we saw but a week agone twitching a kitten’s ears and saying little or nothing, Miss Travers was displaying unexpected fighting qualities.  For a moment, Mrs. Rayner glared at her in tremulous indignation and dismay.

“You—­you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” was her eventual outbreak.

But to this there was no reply.  Miss Travers moved quietly to the door-way, turned and looked her angry sister in the eye, and said,—­

“I shall give up the walk, and will go to my room.  Excuse me to any visitors this evening.”

“You are not going to write to him now, when you are angry, I hope?”

“I shall not write to him until to-morrow, but when I do I shall tell him this, Kate:  that if he desire my confidence he will address his complaints and inquiries to me.  If I am old enough to be engaged to him, in your opinion, I am equally old enough to attend to such details as these, in my own.”

Mrs. Rayner stood one moment as though astounded; then she flew to the door and relieved her surcharged bosom as follows, “Well, I pity the man you marry, whether you are lucky enough to keep this one or not!” and flounced indignantly out of the house.