A Romance in Transit

She shook her head. "He didn't take me into his confidence."

"Well, what did he say for himself?"

"About changing his mind? Nothing."

"He didn't? that's pretty cool! What does he mean by running us off up here on a wild-goose chase?"

"How should I know, when he didn't tell me?"

"Well, I'll just go and find out," Burton declared, with growing displeasure.

But his wife detained him. "Sit down and think about it for a few minutes, first," she said, coolly. "You are angry now, and you mustn't forget that he's with Miss Vennor."

"By Jove! that is the very thing I'm not forgetting. I believe you were more than half-right in your guess, yesterday; but we mustn't let them make fools of themselves – anyway, not while we are responsible."

"I don't quite savez the responsibility," retorted the little lady, flippantly. "But what do you imagine?"

"I don't imagine – I know. He found out, somehow, that she was going with us, and just dropped things and ran for it."

"Do you think he did that?"

"Of course he did. And if we're not careful the odium of the whole thing will fall on us."

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know. I suppose we ought to go back from Golden and take Miss Vennor along with us."

"Wouldn't that be assuming a great deal? You would hardly want to tell the President that you had brought his daughter back because you were afraid she might do something rash."

"Oh, pshaw!" said Burton, who was rather out of his element in trying to pick his way among the social ploughshares.

"But that is what you will have to tell him, if we go back," she insisted, with delicious effrontery.

Burton thought about it for a moment, and ended by accepting the fact merely because it was thrust upon him. "I couldn't very well do that, you know," he objected, and she nearly laughed in his face because he had fallen so readily into her small trap; "but if we don't break it off, what shall we do?"

"Do? why, nothing at all! Mr. Vennor asks us to take his daughter with us on a little pleasure-trip, and he doesn't tell us to bring her back instanter if we happen to find Fred on the train."

Burton was silenced, but he was very far from being convinced, and he gave up the return project reluctantly, promising himself that he should have a very uncomfortable day of it.

In the meantime, the two young people in the observation-car were making hard work of it. A good many undiscussable happenings had intervened between their parting and their meeting, and these interfered sadly with the march of a casual conversation. As usually befalls, it was the young woman who first rose superior to the embarrassments.

"I'm glad of this day," she said, frankly, when they had exhausted the scenery, the matchless morning, the crisp air, and half a dozen other commonplaces. "I enjoyed our trip down from Silver Plume a year ago so much, and it seemed the height of improbability to imagine that we'd ever repeat it. Did you think we ever should?"

"No, indeed," replied Brockway, truthfully; "but I have wished many times that we might. Once in awhile, when I was a boy, I used to get a day that was all my own – a day in which I could go where I pleased and do as I liked. Those days are all marked with white stones now, and I often envy the boy who had them."

"I think I can understand that."

"Can you? I didn't know little girls ever had such days."

"I've had a few, but I think they were never given me. They were usually stolen, and so were doubly precious."

Brockway laughed. "Suppose we call this a stolen day, and try to make it as much like the others as we can. Shall we?"

"It's a bargain," she said, impulsively.

"From this minute, I am any irresponsible age you please; and you – you are to do nothing whatever that you meant to do. Will you agree to that?"

"Gladly," Brockway assented, the more readily since his plans for the day had been so recently demolished and rebuilt. "We'll go where we please, and do as we like; and for this one day nobody shall say 'Don't!'"

She laughed with him, and then became suddenly grave. "It's no use; we can't do it," she said, with mock pathos; "the 'ancients and invalids' won't let us."

"Yes, they will," Brockway asserted, cheerfully; "Burton will take care of them – that's what he's here for. Moreover, I shall take it upon myself to abolish the perversities, animate or inanimate."

"Please do. And if Mrs. Burton scold me – "

"She'd better not," said Brockway, with much severity. "If she does, I'll tell tales out of school and give her something else to think about."

"Could you?"

"You would better believe it; she is trembling in her shoes this blessed minute for fear I may. But you would have to stand by me."

"I? Well, I've promised, you know. What place is this?"

The train had entered the great gateway in Table Mountain, and was clattering past the Golden smelting works.

"It is Golden – you remember, don't you?" And then Brockway bethought him of something. "Will you excuse me a minute, while I get off and speak to the agent?"

"Certainly," said Gertrude; and when the train skirted the high platform, Brockway sprang off and ran quickly to the telegraph office. The operator was just coming out with a freshly written message in his hand.

"Hello, Fred," he said; "didn't know you were on. Do you happen to know a Miss Gertrude Vennor? She's with John Burton's party."

"Yes," said Brockway, tingling to get hold of the message before Burton should come along.

"All right; give her this, will you? I can't leave that blessed wire a minute."

Brockway thrust the telegram into his pocket, dodged around the throng of station loungers, and won back to the rear platform of the observation-car without seeing or being seen of the general agent. Then he drew the crumpled paper from his pocket and read it shamelessly.

"To Miss Gertrude Vennor,

"Care John Burton,

"On Colorado Central Train 51.

"Come back from Golden on first train. Have changed our plans, and shall leave Denver at 1.30 P.M.

"Francis Vennor."

XVIII