"And the exact amount?" He handed her the memorandum. "One hundred and six dollars. Please approve this, Bobbie." She extended the paper to her brother, pinching him viciously under the table as he hesitated. "Quick!" she breathed, almost hissingly, and he scrawled the necessary endorsement. Then she wrote the amount in the body of the check. Carter signed it wrathfully, and she tendered it to Douglass with a smile.
"There! Now you are square with the world," she said, facetiously, but her lips were tremulous with anxiety; he had been so distressingly noncommittal as to that resignation!
"Not exactly with the whole world!" he said, grimly. "I've got a few other trifling obligations to discharge before I can subscribe to that flattering assumption."
"Don't think me ungrateful for your kindness," he continued, earnestly. "I appreciate your invitation more than you know; but you see, this would not go very far in luxurious old New York. It wouldn't more than hardly pay my fare there, and really my presence here is imperative for some indefinite time. I had no intention of resigning, but I am going to ask the favor of a month's leave of absence. McVey is perfectly competent to handle the outfit until my return."
"Take two months if you like," said Carter, cordially. "And while I am not at all easy in mind about that money business, I respect your wishes in the matter and we will consider that over and done with. But I insist on your being our guest at the old home next year. I have your promise?"
Douglass hesitated. "A great deal can happen in a year," he said, quietly; "but if I am alive and other conditions serve I shall be delighted."
Bobbie's manner was not quite so genial and complaisant to his sister when they were again alone: "See here, sis, what the devil—!"
"For shame, Bobbie!" she said, with laughing remonstrance, stopping further utterance with her soft palm. "Swearing isn't at all becoming to small boys. You are contracting very bad local habits." But she vouchsafed him no explanation whatever, merely rumpling his hair over his eyes and kissing him on the tip of his nose.
The day of their departure Douglass accompanied them as far as Tin Cup, where they would take the stage for Alpine. He was all cordiality to Carter and deference to Grace, showing at his best all throughout the pleasant ride. As she laid her hand in his at parting her eyes were full of wistful entreaty:
"Be good to Buffo and my roan, and very, very good to yourself! I am coming back in the spring and so will say auf wiedersehen, not good-by. You will write me occasionally? It will be manna to me until I can get back to 'God's country' again!"