bad company?" said Lance.

Flip stopped short. "Look! if you're goin' to talk like Dad, I'll go
back."

The ridiculousness of such a resemblance struck him more keenly than a
consciousness of his own ingratitude. He hastened to assure Flip that he
was joking. When he had made his peace they fell into talk again, Lance
becoming unselfish enough to inquire into one or two facts concerning
her life which did not immediately affect him. Her mother had died on
the plains when she was a baby, and her brother had run away from home
at twelve. She fully expected to see him again, and thought he might
sometime stray into their canyon. "That is why, then, you take so much
stock in tramps," said Lance. "You expect to recognize HIM?"

"Well," replied Flip, gravely, "there is suthing in THAT, and there's
suthing in THIS: some o' these chaps might run across brother and do him
a good turn for the sake of me."

"Like me, for instance?" suggested Lance.

"Like you. You'd do him a good turn, wouldn't you?"

"You bet!" said Lance, with a sudden emotion that quite startled him;
"only don't you go to throwing yourself round promiscuously." He was
half-conscious of an irritating sense of jealousy, as he asked if any of
her proteges had ever returned.

"No," said Flip, "no one ever did. It shows," she added with sublime
simplicity, "I had done 'em good, and they could get on alone. Don't