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He breathed again and smiled. He had a winning smile, Florian. Jessie Heath smiled in return and they stood there, the two of them, lips parted, eyes holding eyes.

“My God!” said the man who boasted he knew the Rockies like the palm of his own hand, “it looks as if he’d landed her, the stiff.”

Certainly it looked as if he had. For next morning old Heath, red-faced, genial-looking (and not so genial as he looked) approached the head of the fifth floor and said, “How long you been with us, Sykes?”

“Well, I came here as errand boy at thirteen. That’s ten–twelve–fifteen–just about sixteen years next June. Yes, sir.”

“How’d Jessie–how’d my daughter get the idea you were from the West, and a regular mountain goat, and a peak-climber and all that?”

He did look a little uncomfortable then, but it was too late for withdrawal. “I am from the West, you know.”

“Have you had any long vacations since you’ve been with us?”

“No, sir. You see, in the summer, of course–our busy season. I never can get away then. So I’ve taken my two weeks in the fall.”

Old Heath’s eyes narrowed musingly. “Well, you couldn’t have done all this mountain climbing before you were thirteen. And Jessie says—-” He paused, rather blankly. “You say you do know the Rockies, though, eh?”

Florian drew himself up a little. “As well as I know any mountain.”

“Oh, well, then, that’s all right. Seems Jessie thinks you’d be a fine fellow to have along on this trip. I can’t go myself. I hate this mountain climbing, anyway. Too darned hard work. But it’s all right for young folks. Well, now, what do you say? Want to go? You’ve earned a vacation, after sixteen years. There’s about eight in Jessie’s crowd. Not counting guides. What do you say? Like to go?”

For a dazed moment Florian stared at him. “Why, yessir. Yes, sir, I’d–I’d like to go–very much.” And he coughed to hide his joy and terror.

And two weeks later he went.

The thing swept the store like a flame. In an hour everyone knew it from the shipping-room to the roof-restaurant. Myra saw him the day he left. She was game, that girl.

“I hope you’re going to have a beautiful time, Mr. Sykes.”

“Thanks, Myra.” He could afford to be lenient with her, poor little girl.

She ventured a final wretched word or two. “It’s–it’s wonderful of Mr. Heath and–Miss Heath–isn’t it?” She was rubbing salt into her own wound and taking a fierce sort of joy in it.

“Wonderful! Say, they’re a couple of God’s green footstools, that’s what they are!” He was a little mixed, but very much in earnest. “A couple of God’s green footstools.” And he went.

He went, and Myra watched him go, and except for a little swelling gulp in her white throat you’d never have known she’d been hit. He was going with Jessie Heath. Now, Myra had no illusions about those things. Old man Heath’s wife, now dead, had been a girl with no money and no looks, and yet he had married her. If Jessie Heath happened to take a fancy to Florian, why—-

Myra’s little world stood still, and in it were small voices, far away, asking for 6-1/2-B; and have you it in brown, and other unimportant things like that.

Ten minutes after the train had started Florian Sykes knew he shouldn’t have come. He had suspected it before. He kept saying to himself, over and over: “You’ve always wanted a mountain trip, and now you’re going to have it. You’re a lucky guy, that’s what you are. A lucky guy.” But in his heart he knew he was lying.

In the first place, they were all so glib with their altitudes, and their packs, and their trails, and their horses and their camps. It was a rather mixed and raggle-taggle group that Miss Jessie Heath had gathered about her for this expedition to the West. They ranged all the way from a little fluffy witless golden-haired girl they all called Mud, for some obscure reason, and who had been Miss Heath’s room-mate at college, surprisingly enough, to a lady of stern and rock-bound countenance who looked like a stage chaperon made up for the part. She was Miss Heath’s companion in lieu of Mrs. Heath, deceased. In between there were a couple of men of Florian’s age; two youngsters of twenty-one or two who talked of Harvard and asked Florian what his university had been; an old girl whose name Florian never did learn; and two others of Jessie Heath’s age and general style. Florian found himself as bewildered by their talk and views as though they had been jabbering a foreign language. Every now and then, though, one of them would turn to him for a bit of technical advice. If it happened to concern equipment Florian could answer it readily enough. Ten years on the fifth floor had taught him many things. But if the knowledge sought happened to be of things geographical or of nature, he floundered, struggled, sank. And it took them just about half a day to learn this. The trip out takes four, from New York.