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When they had eaten, the Happy Family filed out decorously and went hastily down to the stables. They did not say much, but they did glance over their shoulders uneasily once or twice.

“The old girl is sure hot on our trail,” Pink remarked when they were safely through the big gate. “She must uh got us mixed up with some Wild West show, in her mind. Josephine!”

“Well, by golly, she don’t improve me,” Slim repeated for about the tenth time.

The horses were all fed and everything tidy for the day, and several saddles were being hauled down significantly from their pegs, when Irish delivered himself of a speech, short but to the point. Irish had been very quiet and had taken no part in the discussion that had waxed hot all that morning.

“Now, see here,” he said in his decided way. “Maybe it didn’t strike you as anything but funny–which it sure is. But yuh want to remember that the old girl has come a dickens of a long ways to do us some good. She’s been laying awake nights thinking about how we’ll get to calling her something nice: Angel of the Roundup, maybe–you can’t tell, she’s that romantic. And right here is where I’m going to give the old girl the worth of her money. It won’t hurt us, letting her talk wild and foolish at us once a week, maybe; and the poor old thing’ll just be tickled to death thinking what a lot uh good she’s doing. She won’t stay long, and–well, I go in. If she’ll feel better and more good to the world improving me, she’s got my permission. I guess I can stand it a while.”

The Happy Family looked at him queerly, for if there was a black sheep in the flock, Irish was certainly the man; and to have Irish take the stand he did was, to say the least, unexpected.

Cal Emmett blurted the real cause of their astonishment. “You’ll have to sign the pledge, first pass,” he said. “That’s going to be the ante in her game. How–“

“Well, I don’t play nobody’s hand, or stake anybody’s chips, but my own,” Irish retorted, the blood showing under the tan on his cheeks.

“And we won’t das’t roll a cigarette, even, by golly!” reminded Slim. For Miss Martin, whether intentionally or not, had made plain to them the platform of the new society.

Irish got some deep creases between his eyebrows, and put back his saddle. “You can do as yuh like,” he said, coldly. “I’m going to stay and go to meeting this afternoon, according to her invite. If it’s going to make that poor old freak feel any better thinking she’s a real missionary–” He turned and walked out of the stable without finishing the sentence, and the Happy Family stood quite still and watched him go.

Pink it was who first spoke. “I ain’t the boy to let any long-legged son-of-a-gun like Irish hit a gait I can’t follow,” he dimpled, and took the saddle reluctantly off Toots. “If he can stand it, I guess I can.”

Weary loosened his latigo. “If Cadwolloper is going to learn poetry, I will, too,” he grinned. “Mama! it’ll be good as a three-ringed circus! I never thought uh that, before. I couldn’t miss it.”

“Oh, well, if you fellows take a hand, I’ll sure have to be there to see,” Andy decided. “Two o’clock, did she say?”

* * * * *

“I hate to be called a quitter,” Pink remarked dispiritedly to the Happy Family in general; a harassed looking Happy Family, which sat around and said little, and watched the clock. In an hour they would be due to attend the second meeting of the M.I.S.S.–and one would think, from the look of them, that they were about to be hanged. “I hate to be called a quitter, but right here’s where I lay ’em down. The rest of yuh can go on being improved, if yuh want to–darned if I will, though. I’m all in.”