Dr. and Mrs. Harcourt were embarking upon the steamer bound for the English coast at about the same time that Mr. and Mrs. Lytton, their son Dick and cousin, Shirley Harcourt left the college town for their adventures in the West.
“Don’t do anything a Dudley wouldn’t do,” brightly said Shirley’s great-aunt as she embraced her for the last time. “Take good care of my only niece, Dick, if you go off on any of those wild trails. I hope that you will be armed for bandits.”
“Why, Auntie,—who would think that of you? These aren’t the old days in the West.”
“Twentieth century bandits are the worst kind, child. Remember, Dick.”
“Trust me, Cousin Anne. When you see us again we shall have climbed the Rockies in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and California, so to speak. Shirley, do they have the Rocky Mountains in California?”
“Don’t ask embarrassing questions, Dick. We’ll look it up on the map, for we’ll have plenty of time for that on the train. I’m going to study geography and a lot beside this trip, Aunt Anne. Please take good care of your dear self. I wish that you were going too.”
“I couldn’t stand it, Shirley, not all that you are going to do. Take her away, Dick, before I change my mind about letting her go at all!”
This time it was not to the Lytton car but to a taxi that Dick escorted his cousin, a taxi which ticked away in front of the Harcourt home. Aunt Anne would lock the place finally. Shirley whisked inside, taking her seat beside Mrs. Lytton and giving a sigh of relief as she sank into it.
“Tired, child?” inquired Mrs. Lytton.
“Not so much tired as glad that the last thing is done and that we are really off. Are we?”