My informant deponeth not beyond
the fact unadorned. One may guess there must have been undercurrents of
embarrassment almost as pronounced as if the President were to invite his
Ananias Club to a pink tea. I can imagine Mr. Harley saying: 'Try this
cake, Mr. Ridgway; it isn't poisoned;' and Mr. Ridgway answering: 'Thanks!
After you, my dear Gaston."'
Miss Balfour's anxiety to meet the young woman her fiance had rescued from
the blizzard was not unnatural. Her curiosity was tinged with frank envy,
though jealousy did not enter into it at all. Virginia had come West
explicitly to take the country as she found it, and she had found it,
unfortunately, no more hazardous than little old New York, though certainly
a good deal more diverting to a young woman with democratic proclivities
that still survived the energetic weeding her training had subjected them
to.
She did not quite know what she had expected to find in Mesa. Certainly she
knew that Indians were no longer on the map, and cowboys were kicking up
their last dust before vanishing, but she had supposed that they had left
compensations in their wake.
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