Aggie sneezed and looked wretched.  As for me, I made up my mind then and there that if Letitia Carberry was going to such a neighborhood, she was not going alone.  I am not much with a revolver, but mighty handy with a pair of lungs.

Well, Tish had it all worked out.  “I’ve found the very place,” she said.  “In the first place, it’s Government property.  When our country puts aside a part of itself as a public domain we should show our appreciation.  In the second place, it’s wild.  I’d as soon spend a vacation in Central Park near the Zoo as in the Yellowstone.  In the third place, with an Indian reservation on one side and a national forest on the other, it’s bound to be lonely.  Any tourist,” she said scornfully, “can go to the Yosemite and be photographed under a redwood tree.”

“Do the Indians stay on the reservation?” Aggie asked feebly.

“Probably not,” Tish observed coldly.  “Once for all, Aggie—­if you are going to run like a scared deer every time you see an Indian or a bear, I wish you would go to Asbury Park.”

She forgot herself then and sat down quickly, an action which was followed by an agonized expression.

“Tish,” I said sharply, “you have been riding a horse!

“Only in a cinder ring,” she replied with unwonted docility.  “The teacher said I would be a trifle stiff.”

“How long did you ride?”

“Not more than twenty minutes,” she said.  “The lesson was to be an hour, but somebody put a nickel in a mechanical piano, and the creature I was on started going sideways.”

Well, she had fallen off and had to be taken home in a taxicab.  When Aggie heard it she simply took the pins out of the map and stuck them in Tish’s cushion.  Her mouth was set tight.

“I didn’t really fall,” Tish said.  “I sat down, and it was cinders, and not hard.  It has made my neck stiff, that’s all.”

“That’s enough,” said Aggie.  “If I’ve got to seek pleasure by ramming my spinal column up into my skull and crowding my brains, I’ll stay at home.”

“You can’t fall out of a Western saddle,” Tish protested rather bitterly.  “And if I were you, Aggie, I wouldn’t worry about crowding my brains.”

However, she probably regretted this speech, for she added more gently:  “A high altitude will help your hay fever, Aggie.”

Aggie said with some bitterness that her hay fever did not need to be helped.  That, as far as she could see, it was strong and flourishing.  At that matters rested, except for a bit of conversation just before we left.  Aggie had put on her sweater vest and her muffler and the jacket of her winter suit and was getting into her fur coat, when Tish said:  “Soft as mush, both of you!”

“If you think, Tish Carberry,” I began, “that I—­”

“Apple dumplings!” said Tish.  “Sofa pillows!  Jellyfish!  Not a muscle to divide between you!”

I drew on my woolen tights angrily.