to poke a sticky finger through the baby's velvety cheek. She had spared
little scorn in her rejection of the _bourgeois_ advances of the
commercial traveller with the languishing eyes of Israel: he confided to
his comrades, in relating the incident, that she was smart enough to see
that it wasn't _her_ he was hankering to know, but the pretty sister by
her side; and when challenged to prove that they _were_ sisters,--a
statement which aroused the scepticism of his shrewd associates,--he had
replied, substantially,--

"How do I know? 'Cause I saw their pass before you was up this morning,
cully. It's for Mrs. Captain Rayner and sister, and they're going out
here to Fort Warrener. That's how I know." And the porter of the car had
confirmed the statement in the sanctity of the smoking-room.

And yet--such is the uncertainty of feminine temperament--Mrs. Rayner
was no more incensed at the commercial "gent" because he had obtruded
his attentions than she was at the young man reading in his own section
because he had refrained. Nearly twenty-four hours had elapsed since
they crossed the Missouri, and in all that time not once had she
detected in him a glance that betrayed the faintest interest in her,
or--still more remarkable--in the unquestionably lovely girl at her
side. Intrusiveness she might resent, but indifference she would and
did. Who was this youth, she wondered, who not once had so much as
stolen a look at the sweet, bonny face of her maiden sister? Surely
'twas a face any man would love to gaze upon,--so fair, so exquisite in
contour and feature, so pearly in complexion, so lovely in the deep,
dark brown of its shaded eyes.

The bold glances of the four card-players she had defiantly returned,
and vanquished. Those men, like the travelling gents, were creatures of