The idea was immensely entertaining to the young miner, who laughed so heartily that a sentimental couple billing and cooing behind the fan-palms took wing immediately. "You? you chaperoning Myr—Miss Van Vetter? That's a good one!"
"It's a bad one, where you are concerned. What do you mean by such an inconsistent breach of the proprieties?"
"Inconsistent? I'm afraid I don't quite catch on."
"Yes, inconsistent. You bury yourself for months on end in that powder-smelly old tunnel of yours, and about the time we've comfortably forgotten you, you straggle in with a dress-coat on your arm and proceed to monopolize one of us. What do you take us for?"
It was on the tip of Bartrow's tongue to retort that he would very much like to take Miss Van Vetter for better or worse, but he had not the courage of his convictions. So he kept well in the middle of the road, and made the smoke-blackened tunnel his excuse for the inconsistency.
"It isn't 'months,' Connie; or at least it's only two of them. You know I'd be glad enough to chase myself into Denver every other day if I could. But it is coming down to brass tacks with us in the Little Myriad, and I've just got to keep my eye on the gun."
Whereupon pertness, or the Constance Elliott transmutation of it, vanished, and she made him sit down.
"Tell me all about the Little Myriad, Dick. Is it going to keep its promise?"
The Little Myriad's owner sought and found a handkerchief, using it mopwise. Curious questions touching the prospects of his venture on Topeka Mountain were beginning to have a perspiratory effect upon him.
"I wish I could know for sure, Connie. Sometimes I think it will; and some other times I should think it means to go back on me,—if I dared to."