“I’ve been fleshy all my life,” I said.  “I’m no lazier than most, and I’m a dratted sight more agreeable than some I know, on account of having the ends of my nerves padded.”

But she switched to another subject in her characteristic manner.

“Have you ever reflected, either of you,” she observed, “that we know nothing of this great land of ours?  That we sing of loving ’thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills’—­although the word ‘templed’ savors of paganism and does not belong in a national hymn?  And that it is all balderdash?”

Aggie took exception to this and said that she loved her native land, and had been south to Pinehurst and west to see her niece in Minneapolis, on account of the baby having been named for her.

But Tish merely listened with a grim smile.  “Travel from a car window,” she observed, “is no better than travel in a nickelodeon.  I have done all of that I am going to.  I intend to become acquainted with my native land, closely acquainted.  State by State I shall wander over it, refreshing soul and body and using muscles too long unused.”

“Tish!” Aggie quavered.  “You are not going on another walking-tour?”

Only a year or two before Tish had read Stevenson’s “Travels with a Donkey,” and had been possessed to follow his example.  I have elsewhere recorded the details of that terrible trip.  Even I turned pale, I fear, and cast a nervous eye toward the table where Tish keeps her reading-matter.

Tish is imaginative, and is always influenced by the latest book she has read.  For instance, a volume on “Nursing at the Front” almost sent her across to France, although she cannot make a bed and never could, and turns pale at the sight of blood; and another time a book on flying machines sent her up into the air, mentally if not literally.  I shall never forget the time she secured some literature on the Mormon Church, and the difficulty I had in smuggling it out under my coat.

Tish did not refute the walking-tour at once, but fell into a deep reverie.

It is not her custom to confide her plans to us until they are fully shaped and too far on to be interfered with, which accounts for our nervousness.

On arriving at her apartment, however, we found a map laid out on the table and the Rocky Mountains marked with pins.  We noticed that whenever she straightened from the table she grunted.

“What we want,” Tish said, “is isolation.  No people.  No crowds.  No servants.  If I don’t get away from Hannah soon I’ll murder her.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to see somebody now and then, Tish,” Aggie objected.

“Nobody,” Tish said firmly.  “A good horse is companion enough.”  She forgot herself and straightened completely, and she groaned.

“We might meet some desirable people, Tish,” I put in firmly.  “If we do, I don’t intend to run like a rabbit.”

“Desirable people!” Tish scoffed.  “In the Rocky Mountains!  My dear Lizzie, every desperado in the country takes refuge in the Rockies.  Of course, if you want to take up with that class—­”