"Is that all?" and Hetty laughed.
The lad looked at her reproachfully. "You seem to bear up astonishingly well. It will be different with me. You may even have married one of those miner fellows by the time I come back again."
There was no apparent reason why the suggestion should drive the smile out of Hetty's eyes; but it certainly did; though Probyn did not notice her sudden change of mood.
"Yes," he said, "I'm afraid I'll have to go, and that's why I want you to give me something to remember you by when I'm far away. It needn't be very much. That pretty little ribbon at your neck would do."
The request was not out of keeping with the trooper's usual conversation, which consisted largely of badinage, and Hetty could not be expected to realize that he now and then meant what he said. It, however, happened that Ingleby, who said it suited her complexion, had once laughingly bought her that ribbon in a Vancouver dry-goods store.
"You certainly can't have it," she said, a trifle sharply.
Probyn, who perversely fancied her decisiveness was assumed and intended to be provocative, lost his head.
"Then you don't mean to give me a trifle of that kind after chopping wood for you two days every week and kneading an ovenful of bread?" he said.
"No," said Hetty, who was by no means anxious to detain him now. "It wasn't anything like that often, and I told you I was busy. Why don't you go?"
"Then I'm afraid I'll have to take it," said Probyn, with a reckless laugh.