call myself several kinds of a fool for letting a girl--however wonderful
her eyes--give me bad half-hours quite so frequently; the thing had never
happened to me before, and I had known hundreds of nice
girls--approximately. When a fellow goes through a co-ed course, and has a
dad whom the papers call financier, he gets a speaking-acquaintance with a
few girls. The trouble with me was, I never gave the whole bunch as much
thought as I was giving to Beryl King--and the more I thought about her,
the less satisfaction there was in the thinking.

I waited a day or two, and then practically ran away from my work and rode
over to that little butte. Some one was sitting on the same flat rock, and
I climbed up to the place with more haste than grace, I imagine. When
I reached the top, panting like the purr of the _Yellow Peril_--my
automobile--when it gets warmed up and going smoothly, I discovered that
it was Edith Loroman sitting placidly, with a camera on her knees, doing
things to the internal organs of the thing. I don't know much about
cameras, so I can't be more explicit.

"If it isn't Ellie, looking for all the world like the _Virginian_ just
stepped down from behind the footlights!" was her greeting. "Where in the
world have you been, that you haven't been over to see us?"

"You must know that the palace of the King is closed against the
Carletons," I, said, and I'm afraid I said it a bit crossly; I hadn't
climbed that unmerciful butte just to bandy commonplaces with Edith
Loroman, even if we were old friends. There are times when new enemies are
more diverting than the oldest of old friends.

"Well, you could come when Uncle Homer is away--which he often is," she
pouted. "Every Sunday he drives over to Kenmore and pokes around his