Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/136

118 mesa at sunset. "But until we do so we shall get along by ourselves. Are we not doing well?"

"Excellently, but—"

"That, sir, is a forbidden word in the Hidden Homestead. We have eliminated another, distinctly feminine—'because'—or I would use it to end the argument. Tell me about the project."

"Don't you want to open your letters?" Sheridan had been to Pioche on business and had brought back two letters from the General Delivery, despite the girl's assertion that she did not expect any mail.

She produced them from the pocket of her gown.

"One is not important," she laughed. "I would like to look at the other."

She showed him the one, an advertisement from Pioche's biggest store, an announcement of a Grand Millinery Opening with styles direct from Paris and New York.

"I'd look well wearing a Paris hat and gown up here, wouldn't I?" she asked him with a flash of the small, perfect teeth in the smile that he had become so eager to provoke. And he fell to wondering just how well she would look in such furbelows.

She handed him the other communication with a little cry of joy.

"Our furniture has come—at last," she said. "Now we can have a little home that will seem real. You will like some of the things."

It was always the unselfish "we," he noticed. Thora was always included equally. Mary Burrows was a true democrat.

"I'm sending over to Pioche," he said,