“What’s the matter with Colina?” said Bob Flick suddenly.  “He’ll never come there.  A good reason why!”

Pearl became perfectly still.  It was evident that the suggestion had reached her, and that she was thinking it over.  Her father, too, considered the matter.  “Excellent,” he cried; “excellent.”

And Pearl looked up eagerly.  “But when can we go, when?” she cried and stretched out an imploring hand to touch his knee.  “To-morrow?  No, to-day.  You said yesterday, father, that you would be going back at once.  Oh, to-day!  The afternoon train—­” She looked eagerly from one man to another.

“Yes, to-day,” agreed Bob Flick.  “You can go as well to-day as to-morrow, Gallito.”

The Spaniard had been thinking with thrust-out jaw and narrowed eyes, now he threw out his hands and lifted his brows.  “Have it so, then,” he said.  “The train leaves this afternoon.  Go, Pearl, and pack your things.  I promised Hughie that he should go back with me, but he had better wait a few days until his mother can get her sister to stay with her.  You had better tell him, Pearl.”

After she had gone into the house the two men sat in silence for a few minutes and then Flick lifted his relieved face to the sky.  “If there’s any God up there,” he said, “I’m thanking him for that unexpected you were talking about, Gallito.”

“Ah, that unexpected!” returned Gallito.  “It is more comforting than many religions.  More than once when I have been in a tight place I have relied on it and not vainly.  You will go with us this afternoon, Bob?”

Flick hesitated a moment.  “I can’t,” he said.  “I’ve got a lot to do at the mines here, but I can come up soon if you think it will be all right.”

The old man smiled in his most saturnine fashion and sighed dismally.  “I will make a special offering to the church if you come often,” he said.  “I can see black days ahead of us.  She does not like the mountains.”

“Oh, she’ll not stay long,” Flick consoled him.  “The summer, perhaps; but she will be ready to sign up with Sweeney before fall.  She can’t stay off the stage longer than that.  You’ll see.”

Gallito sighed again and pessimistically shook his head.  He was far from anxious to assume the responsibility of restoring his daughter’s spirits, and had hoped that Flick would relieve him of that duty, but, since that was not to be, he accepted the situation with what philosophy and fortitude he could muster and hurried the feminine preparations for departure so successfully that he and Pearl actually got away on the afternoon train.