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XXXVII

NEWS FOR JEAN

THE second meeting between the Ranger brothers was much more embarrassing than cordial. Each at sight of the other recalled their last encounter. They shook hands hesitatingly, and after an awkward pause sat down together on the front porch of the primitive hotel.

Joseph, who had been awaiting the arrival of his wife and the Captain for a couple of days, was displeased because his Wahnetta had not been within call from the moment of his advent, as long habit had led him to expect. That she met him now with the air of a friend and an equal, and after a pleasant greeting on her part discreetly left the brothers to themselves while she went in quest of her babies, was a display of good breeding and motherly solicitude which Joseph Ranger would have commended in any woman not his wife. But his will had so long been her only law that her greeting, in connection with his embarrassment at meeting his brother, put him in a very unamiable frame of mind.

"I concluded that you had gone back on your agreement, John," he growled, after a painful silence.

"Oh, did you? Since when have you made a new record for punctuality, Joe?"

"Since the arrival of the last courier at the tradingpost, who brought me your letter."

"What did you think of my proposition?"

"I accepted it at once, or I would not have been here. Who is Wahnetta going out driving with, I wonder?"

"I called the cab for a drive with the children a little before you came, sir," said the nurse.

"Oh!"