“Riggs,” suggested Prosper hurriedly.

“Riggs.  Excuse me!  I was thinking of young Lieutenant Griggs of the Navy, whom I knew in the days now past.  Mr. Riggs, I should say.  Then you want me to”—­

“To be my old mother, ma’am,” said Prosper tremblingly.  “That is, to pretend and look ez ef you was!  You see, I haven’t any, but I thought it would be nice for the boys, and make it more like home in my new house, ef I allowed that my old mother would be comin’ to live with me.  They don’t know I never had a mother to speak of.  They’ll never find it out!  Say ye will, Mrs. Pottinger!  Do!”

And here the unexpected occurred.  Against all conventional rules and all accepted traditions of fiction, I am obliged to state that Mrs. Pottinger did not rise up and order the trembling Prosper to leave the house!  She only gripped the arm of her chair a little tighter, leaned forward, and disdaining her usual precision and refinement of speech, said quietly:  “It’s a bargain.  If that’s what you’re wanting, my son, you can count upon me as becoming your old mother, Cecilia Jane Pottinger Riggs, every time!”

A few days later the sentimentalist Joe Wynbrook walked into the Wild Cat saloon, where his comrades were drinking, and laid a letter down on the bar with every expression of astonishment and disgust.  “Look,” he said, “if that don’t beat all!  Ye wouldn’t believe it, but here’s Prossy Riggs writin’ that he came across his mother—­his mother, gentlemen—­in ‘Frisco; she hevin’, unbeknownst to him, joined a party visiting the coast!  And what does this blamed fool do?  Why, he’s goin’ to bring her—­that old woman—­here!  Here—­gentlemen—­to take charge of that new house—­and spoil our fun.  And the God-forsaken idiot thinks that we’ll like it!”

It was one of those rare mornings in the rainy season when there was a suspicion of spring in the air, and after a night of rainfall the sun broke through fleecy clouds with little islets of blue sky—­when Prosper Riggs and his mother drove into Wild Cat camp.  An expression of cheerfulness was on the faces of his old comrades.  For it had been recognized that, after all, “Prossy” had a perfect right to bring his old mother there—­his well-known youth and inexperience preventing this baleful performance from being established as a precedent.  For these reasons hats were cheerfully doffed, and some jackets put on, as the buggy swept up the hill to the pretty new cottage, with its green blinds and white veranda, on the crest.

Yet I am afraid that Prosper was not perfectly happy, even in the triumphant consummation of his plans.  Mrs. Pottinger’s sudden and business-like acquiescence in it, and her singular lapse from her genteel precision, were gratifying but startling to his ingenuousness.  And although from the moment she accepted the situation she was fertile in resources and full of precaution against any possibility of detection, he saw, with some uneasiness, that its control had passed out of his hands.