Tish relinquished Europe slowly.

“One would think,” Charlie Sands said, “that you were a German being asked to give up Belgium.”

“What part of the West?” she demanded.  “It’s all civilized, isn’t it?”

“The Rocky Mountains,” said Charlie Sands, “will never be civilized.”

Tish broke off a piece of Bran-Nut, and when she thought no one was looking poured a little tea over it.  There was a gleam in her eye that Aggie and I have learned to know.

“Mountains!” she said.  “That ought to be good for Aggie’s hay fever.”

“I’d rather live with hay fever,” Aggie put in sharply, “than cure it by falling over a precipice.”

“You’ll have to take a chance on that, of course,” Charlie Sands said.  “I’m not sure it will be safe, but I am sure it will be interesting.”

Oh, he knew Tish well enough.  Tell her a thing was dangerous, and no power could restrain her.

I do not mind saying that I was not keen about the thing.  I had my fortune told years ago, and the palmist said that if a certain line had had a bend in it I should have been hanged.  But since it did not, to be careful of high places.

“It’s a sporting chance,” said Charlie Sands, although I was prodding him under the table.  “With some good horses and a bag of this—­er—­concentrated food, you would have the time of your young lives.”

This was figurative.  We are all of us round fifty.

“The—­the Bran-Nut,” he said, “would serve for both food and ammunition.  I can see you riding along, now and then dropping a piece of it on the head of some unlucky mountain goat, and watching it topple over into eternity.  I can see—­”

“Riding!” said Aggie.  “Then I’m not going.  I have never been on a horse and I never intend to be.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Tish snapped.  “If you’ve never been on a horse, it’s time and to spare you got on one.”

Hannah had been clearing the table with her lips shut tight.  Hannah is an old and privileged servant and has a most unfortunate habit of speaking her mind.  So now she stopped beside Tish.

“You take my advice and go, Miss Tish,” she said.  “If you ride a horse round some and get an appetite, you’ll go down on your knees and apologize to your Maker for the stuff we’ve been eating the last four weeks.”  She turned to Charlie Sands, and positively her chin was quivering.  “I’m a healthy woman,” she said, “and I work hard and need good nourishing food.  When it’s come to a point where I eat the cat’s meat and let it go hungry,” she said, “it’s time either I lost my appetite or Miss Tish went away.”

Well, Tish dismissed Hannah haughtily from the room, and the conversation went on.  None of us had been far West, although Tish has a sister-in-law in, Toledo, Ohio.  But owing to a quarrel over a pair of andirons that had been in the family for a time, she had never visited her.

“You’ll like it, all of you,” Charlie Sands said as we waited for the baked apples.  “Once get started with a good horse between your knees, and—­”