meant it.

"So long as you keep that promise," she said, smiling a bit, "I shall try
to remember mine enemy with respect."

"And I hope that mine enemy shall sometimes view the beauties of White
Divide from a little distance--say half a mile or so," I answered
daringly.

She heard me, but at that minute that Weaver chap came up, and she began
talking to him as though he was her long-lost friend. I was clearly out of
it, so I told Edith and her mother good night, bowed to "Aunt Lodema" and
got the stony stare for my reward, and rounded up my crowd.

We passed old King in a body, and he growled something I could not hear;
one of the boys told me, afterward, that it was just as well I didn't. We
rode away under the stars, and I wished that night had been four times as
long, and that Beryl King would be as nice to me as was Edith Loroman.




CHAPTER VII.

One Day Too Late!


I suppose there is always a time when a fellow passes quite suddenly out
of the cub-stage and feels himself a man--or, at least, a very great
desire to be one. Until that Fourth of July life had been to me a