The yellow blossoms made a garland about her hat.

“Do you like them thus?” she asked, delighted.

“Immensely.”

“Then they shall stay there.  And Imo will die of envy when I tell her they’re yours.”

“Nobody ever died of that.”

“Perhaps not.  But she will suffer extremely.  You didn’t even put bean plants in her hat.”

Lee was highly amused at this raillery.  He began to walk forward by her side as she moved away from the spot, now addressing her, now listening to her words, in a desire to stretch the last minute to the uttermost.  Her head came just even with his shoulder, so that she had to raise her face to gaze at him when he spoke, and in the act there was something simple, winning, blithe, as likewise in the swing of her lissom figure beside his own there was an inimitable jauntiness and cheer.  He divined her eager, ardent spirit; and the closeness of her, this comradeship, set his blood humming.

Abruptly he halted, laying a finger on her arm.

“I mustn’t go the whole way, you know,” he said, “though I should like to.  For, by heavens, you’ve opened my eyes!  Didn’t realize how satiated with myself I’d become.  But I’ll make up for that now, Miss Ruth, and it won’t be very long before you and your friend will be planning how to rid yourselves of me.”

“Just try us and see,” she exclaimed.

“Well, I shall.  Till to-morrow, then.”

“Till to-morrow, yes.”  She moved forward some paces and wheeled about, pointing her forefinger at his head and working her thumb.  “Beware—­and don’t forget!” Then after another advance and face about she concluded by blowing him a kiss off the palm of her hand, with which performance she did actually start for home, weaving her way through the sagebrush and going farther and farther off.

“What a pretty little witch she is!” thought Lee; and he, too, made his way from the spot.

Dave’s hot, harassed face greeted him at the door.

“Where is she?  Didn’t she come?” he cried, peering about everywhere.  “Well, thank goodness for that!  But if that isn’t the way with a girl—­and after I’d swept up and made the beds and scraped all the skillets, too!”

CHAPTER IX

That Sunday afternoon at Sarita Creek!  The dinner, so savoury, so delectable; the two girls, arrayed in cool white lawn, rosy-cheeked, beaming; the gay talk and banter and laughter; the blissful hours together on the grass beneath the trees, with the wide mesa diffusing an immense languor, with the mountains bestowing a vast peace, with the brook at their feet murmuring an accompaniment to their words—­hours to treasure, hours of pure gold:  Little wonder that Dave, lying full length and gazing upward through the boughs at the blue vault, allowed his eyelids to sink and at last to close.  Little wonder the girls’ faces grew dreamy and their voices gentle.  And none, none at all, that Lee succumbed to the spell.