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And next morning, at eleven, a very wonderful thing began to happen. Next morning, at eleven, Miss Jessie Heath loped (well, it can’t be helped. That describes it exactly) into the broad aisles of the fifth floor. She had been coming in a great deal, lately. The Western trip, no doubt.

Descriptions of people are clumsy things, at best, and stop one’s story. But Jessie Heath must have her paragraph. A half-dozen lines ought to do it. Well–she was the kind of girl who always goes around with a couple of Airedales, and in woollen stockings, low shoes and mannish shirts, and shell-rimmed glasses, and you felt she wore Ferris waists. Her hair was that ashen blonde with no glint of gold in it. You knew it would become grey in middle age with no definite period of transition. She never buttoned her heavy welted gloves but wore them back over her hand, like a cuff, very English. You felt there must be a riding crop concealed about her somewhere. Perhaps up her spine.

As has been said, there was always a little flurry when she came into the big store that had made millions for her father. It would be nonsense to suppose that Jessie Heath ever deliberately set out to attract a man who was an employee in that store. But it is pleasant and soothing to be admired, and to have a fine pair of eyes look fine things into one’s own (shell-rimmed) ones. And, after all, the Jessie Heaths of this world are walked with, and golfed with, and ridden with, and tennised with, and told that they’re wonderful pals. But it’s the Myras that are made love to. So now, when Florian Sykes looked at her, and flushed a little, and said, “I suppose there are a lot of lucky ones going along with you on this trip, Miss–Jessie,” she flushed, too, and flicked her boot with her riding crop–No, no! I forgot. She didn’t have a riding crop. Well, anyway she gave the effect of flicking her boot with her riding crop, and said:

“Would you like to go?”

“Would I like to go—-!” He choked over it. Then he sighed, and smiled rather wistfully. “That’s needlessly cruel of you, Miss Jessie.”

“Maybe it’s not so cruel as you think,” Jessie Heath answered. “Did you make out that list?”

“I spent practically all of yesterday on it.” Which we know was a lie because, look, wasn’t he with Myra?

They went over the list together. Fishing tackle, tents, pocket-flashes, puttees, ponchos, chocolate, quirts, slickers, matches, medicine-case, sweaters, cooking utensils, blankets. It grew longer, and longer. Their heads came close together over it. And they trailed from department to department, laughing and talking together. And the two Maine ex-guides and the clerk who boasted he knew the Rockies like the palm of his hand, said to one another, “Get on to Nature’s Rival trying to make a hit with Jessie.”

Meanwhile Jessie was saying, “Of course you know the Rockies, being a Western man, and all.”

Florian smiled rather deprecatingly. “Queer part of it is I don’t know the Rockies so well–” with an emphasis on the word Rockies that led one to think his more noteworthy feats of altitude had been accomplished about the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Andes, and the lesser Appalachians.

“But you’ve climbed them, haven’t you?”

He burned his bridges behind him. “Only the–ah–eastern slopes.”

“Oh, that’s all right, then. We’re going to do the west. It’ll be wonderful having you—-“

“Me!”

“Nothing. Let’s go on with the list. M-m-m–where were we? Oh, yes. Now trout flies. Which do you honestly think best for mountain trout? The Silver Doctor or the Gray Hackle or the Yellow Professor? U’m?”

Inspiration comes to us at such times. It could have been nothing less that prompted him to say, “Well–doesn’t that depend a lot on the weather and the depth of the–ahem!–water?”

“Yes, of course. How silly of me. We’ll take a lot of all kinds, and then we’ll be safe.”