Their first pause was at the exquisite liquid flower known as the Morning Glory Pool. The wondrous color and shape of this spring held them long. Some one, either with a wish to test its depth, or desiring to furnish the blue morning glory with a pistil, had dropped a stick into its centre.
Irving smiled at his own thoughts. “The driver is lucky if Madama doesn’t make him get out and fish for that stick,” he thought.
After their ramble of an hour the friends halted near the Riverside Geyser, where the gathering crowd indicated that it would soon spout.
In moving about for desirable points of vantage, Mr. Derwent and Robert Nixon became separated from Irving, who from his greater height was satisfied with his position behind a knot of persons on the river bank. Among them was a young girl with her back to him. She was bareheaded and wore a white gown. Irving looked twice idly at her because her hair was pretty, and then noticed that a couple of soldiers, off duty, spoke to her and that she tried to repel them.
“Come now, Goldilocks,” said one of them ingratiatingly, in his hoarse voice, “wasn’t I introduced to you all right at Norris? Don’t be stuck up.”
He came closer, with open admiration. The girl made some soft reply, then turned, and there was no mistaking the look, half of annoyance and half of fear, in her childlike face.
Irving stepped forward instinctively, and recognized Betsy’s friend. He had noticed in the dining-room that the girl bore a resemblance to some one he had seen, but he had not been able to locate it.
“O Mr. Bruce!” she ejaculated involuntarily, coming nearer as if for protection.
The soldiers saw him lift his hat, and fell back.