If it had been some other girl--say Ethel Mapleton--I'd have suspected the genuineness of that surprise; as it was, I could only think she had been very much absorbed not to hear me scrambling up there.
"You're an early bird," she said dryly, "to be so far from home." She glanced toward the pass, as though she would like to cut and run, but hated to give me the satisfaction.
"Well," I told her with inane complacency, "you will remember that 'it's the early bird that catches the worm.'" "What a pretty speech!" she commented, and I saw what I'd done, and felt myself turn a beautiful purple.

Compare her to a worm! But she laughed when she saw how uncomfortable I was, and after that I was almost glad I'd said it; she _did_ have dimples--two of them--and-- The laugh, however, was no sign of incipient amiability, as I very soon discovered.

She turned her back on me and went imperturbably on with her sketching; she was trying to put on paper the lights and shades of White Divide--and even a desire to be chivalrous will not permit me to lie and say that she was making any great success of it.

I don't believe the Lord ever intended her for an artist.
"Aren't you giving King's Highway a much wider mouth than it's entitled to ?" I asked mildly, after watching her for a minute.
"I should not be surprised," she told me haughtily, "if you some day wished it still wider." "There wouldn't be the chance for fighting, if it was; and I take great pleasure in keeping the feud going." "I thought you were anxious for a truce," she said recklessly, shading a slope so that it looked like the peak of a roof.
"I am," I retorted shamelessly.

"I'm anxious for anything under the sun that will keep you talking to me.