"The shock is mutual," she laughed. "I must say that you and Mr.
Winton have chosen a highly unconventional environment for your
sketching-field."

"I'm down," he admitted cheerfully; "please don't trample on me. But
really, it wasn't all fib. Jack does do things with a pencil--other
things besides maps and working profiles, I mean. Won't you come over
and let me do the honors of the studio?"--with a grandiloquent
arm-sweep meant to include the construction camp in general and the
"dinkey" caboose-car in particular.

It was the invitation she would have angled for, but she was too wise
to assent too readily.

"Oh, no; I think we mustn't. I'm afraid Mr. Winton might not like it."

"Not like it? If you'll come he'll never forgive himself for not being
here to 'shoot up' the camp for you in person. He is away, you know;
gone to Carbonate for the day."

"Ought we to go, Cousin Billy?" she asked, shifting, not the decision,
but the responsibility for it, to broader shoulders.

"Why not, if you care to?" said the athlete, to whom right-of-way
fights were mere matters of business in no wise conflicting with the
social ameliorations.

Virginia hesitated. There was a thing to be said to Mr. Adams, and
that without delay; but how could she say it with her cousin standing
by to make an impossible trio out of any attempted duet confidential?