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“But he isn’t, you know,” Harshaw says. “He’s five feet ten–if he’s that.”

“Ten and a half,” I hasten to amend.

Our lunch that day had been left in the boat. We went down and ate it under the mountain birches at a spot where the Snow Bank empties into the lagoon–not our lagoon, as we called it, between our camp and the lovely Sand Springs Fall, but the upper one, made by the springs themselves, before their waters reach the river. In front of us, half embraced by the lagoon and half by the river, lay a little island-ranch of about ten acres, not cut up in crops, but all over green in pasture. A small cabin, propping up a large hop-vine, showed against a mass of birch and cottonwood on the river side of the island.

“What a place for a honeymoon!” said I.

“There is material there for half of a honeymoon,” said Tom–“not bad material, either.”

“Oh, yes,” I said; “we have seen her–that is, we have seen her sunbonnet.”

“Kitty, you’ve got a rival,” I exclaimed: for there in the sunny centre of the island, planted with obvious design right in front of the Snow Bank, our Snow Bank, was an artist’s big white umbrella.

“Why should I not have, in a place like this?” she said. “If the schemers arrive by twos, why not two of my modest craft? We shall leave it as we find it; we don’t intend to carry it away in our pockets.” She stopped, and blushed disdainfully. “I forgot,” she murmured, “my own mercenary designs.”

“I have not heard of these mercenary designs of yours. What are they, may I ask?” Harshaw had turned on his side on the grass, and half rose on one elbow as he looked at her.

“That is strange,” mocked Kitty, with supreme coldness. “You have always been so interested in my affairs!”

“I always shall be,” he replied seriously, with supreme gentleness.

“I ought to be so grateful.”

“But unfortunately you are not.”

“I should be grateful–if you would move a little farther to the right, if you please. That young person in the pink sunbonnet is coming down to water her horses again.”

Harshaw calmly took himself out of her way altogether, lighted his pipe, and went down close to the water, and sat there on a stone, and presently, as we could hear, entered into easy conversation with the pink sunbonnet, the face of which leaned toward him over the pony’s neck as he stooped to drink. The splashed waters became still, and softly the whole picture–pink sunbonnet, clay-bank pony, pale and shivery willows, and deep blue sky–developed on the negative of the clear lagoon.

There was no use in saying how pretty it was, so we resorted to the other note, of disparagement. I remarked that I should not think a pink sunbonnet would be ravishingly becoming to the average Snake River complexion, as I had seen it.

” That sunbonnet is becoming, you bet!” Tom remarked. “Wait till you see the face inside it.”

“Have you seen it?”

“Quite frequently. Do you think Harshaw would sit there talking with her, as he does by the hour, if that sunbonnet was not becoming?”

“As he does by the hour! And why have we not heard of her before?” I requested to be told.

“Business, my dear. She is a feature of the scheme–quite an important one. She represents the hitch which is sure to develop early in the history of every live enterprise.”

“Indeed?” I said. And if Harshaw talked with her on business, I didn’t see what his talking had to do with the face inside her bonnet.

“I don’t say that it’s always on business,” Tom threw in significantly.

“Who is the lady in the pink sunbonnet, and what is your business with her?” I demanded.

“I question the propriety of speaking of her in just that tone,” said Tom, “inasmuch as she happens to be a lady–somewhat off the conventional lines. She waters her own stock and milks her own cow, because the old Indian girl who lives with her is laid up at present with a fever. Her father was an artist–one of the great unappreciated”–