On the porch, where Miss Whitcom had been regaling her relations with, it must be admitted, a rather sensational account of how the inhabitants of Tahulamaji had formerly been cannibals, the absence of Lynndal Barry was noticed.

"Where is he?" asked the Rev. Needham, with a quick inward flash of nervousness.

Louise was assailed by a great longing to come out, wildly and fully, with some superb flow of words which should ease the burden of her heart. It seemed urgent, in fact, that she explain his absence. Aunt Marjie braced herself for an expected scene. But just then the missing man put in an appearance. Hilda preceded him up the steps. Instead of crying out that her heart was breaking, Louise felt suddenly an insane desire to laugh. Hilda was leading Lynndal back, as though to compensate for leading Leslie off!

"Well, well," began the Rev. Needham, with all the hospitable bluffness he could summon. "We were talking about you!"

"—Wondering where you were," continued Mrs. Needham.

[Pg 221]

"—Fearing you might have embarked for the wicked city of Beulah," Marjory gaily carried it on, "where young men are not safe, and the song of the siren never dies away!"

The Rev. Needham looked startled, then rather grim, then again just vaguely uneasy. Barry explained that he had been strolling in the woods.

"No danger of getting lost, at any rate," declared Miss Whitcom, "since the church advertises so efficiently!"

There promised to be a rather pained silence; but Mrs. Needham rose, smoothed down the front of her skirt, and announced that she must go and dress for dinner.

"Ah, yes," lamented her sister cheerfully, "one must dress, even in the wilderness."

"Oh, we don't really make anything of it, Marjie. Only it sort of rests you—to make a change."

"Dress! Isn't it absurd? Yet how we dote on it! In this respect we aren't, after all, civilized to any dangerous degree. Why, in Tahulamaji—"

"Marjie, there isn't a bit of use of your changing. You look lovely."

"Thanks," replied her sister. "Still, one must."

"We all do just as we please up here in the woods, you know."

"Ah, but the men, the men," whispered Miss Whitcom with delicious vulgarity behind her hand. "And after all, we must have some regard for the conventions." Her tone was just a little pointed.

[Pg 222]

"Yes, Marjie, I suppose, in a way...." Anna admitted.

"And then—there's the church," Miss Whitcom persisted, almost brutally whimsical.

"The church?"

"Since it tries so very hard to keep abreast of the times—one might say, à la mode!"

The sisters went into the cottage. Louise rose.

"I must dress too," she announced, crossing quickly to the door.

"I like that gown ever so much," said Lynndal.

She turned and cast him a rueful glance. "Thank you. But I really must change." She smiled faintly. The high colour had faded, and her eyes had lost their look of splendid wildness.

"Wait for me!" cried Hilda, making a tomboy dive for the door, and capturing her sister's waist, hanging on her affectionately as they went in together.

"At any rate, we don't have to dress," laughed the Rev. Needham quite jovially.

"You're sure? I'd begun to get rather scared. You see I didn't bring out anything...."

The minister laughed again. "No, the men up here are more sensible."

"What did Miss Whitcom mean," asked Barry after a short pause, "when she spoke the way she did about the church?"

"The church, Barry?"

"Something about it being à la mode."

[Pg 223]

"Oh, I—the fact is, Barry, I don't quite know myself. I'm sure she didn't mean anything in particular. That is, you see Marjory has a kind of playful way of speaking.... You have to know her well to understand her."

"She seems like a very jolly sort."

"Yes, yes. She's ever so jolly. Sometimes I feel.... Well, of course, every one has their times of being jollier than at other times, don't they?" There seemed something here appealing, a little pathetic, even—as though Alfred Needham, if he only could one day get his heels down, would turn out really very jolly himself.

The conversation was growing thin, a little vague. It was a relief to have the talk drift into other and more concrete channels.

"Well," remarked Barry, "just before I left for the East we got the final engineering report on the new San Pedro reservoir. It looks pretty good to me."

"Something to open up a whole new area?"

"Yes, that's it. By building another dam—" And he explained the rather technical proposition.

"A good deal like the Santa Cruz, isn't it?" asked the minister.

"Yes, a good deal like that. You can be pretty sure of the water near the source, but of course the farther downstream you go, the less dependable the flow is. Sometimes there will be floods, and then again sometimes the bed will go entirely dry."

[Pg 224]

"Yes, yes," said the Rev. Needham meditatively, and almost as though in these fluxes of the Arizona rivers he recognized a subtle resemblance to life's fluxes which kept him ever hopping. "Let's see," he continued, "do I own anything just there, in the San Pedro valley?"

"You certainly do," replied Barry, and he drew a map out of his pocket, spread it on his knee, hitched his chair a little closer, and traced the Needham holdings with his pencil. "This strip in Cochise County—that little triangular patch there where Pinal and Pima join.... It ought to add quite a bit to your income, when the deal is really swung."

The Rev. Needham sighed appreciatively. "I wouldn't have any of these opportunities if it weren't for you being right there on the spot to look out for things."

"Oh, I do what I can," said Barry quietly. He folded up the map and put it away. "You see I'm very much interested in Arizona—new settlers coming all the time—new homes under way...." His eyes were dimly wistful. "Pretty soon we'll he getting another man in Congress...."

"Barry, do you suppose later on you'll be ............