"Yes," said he at last. "You're the only competent engineer we've got who understands the plans. You'll have to go for a few months—if you don't mind—anyhow."
"Pa," said I, "I'm tired of metal work, and I need a vacation in new and pleasant surroundings, and—and associations. Billy is awfully pleasant to associate with, and—and be surrounded by; and I've never, never been in Guadalanawhat-you-may-call-it; and—and—may we Pa?"
"Young woman!" glared Pa, "who have you the effrontery to call 'Billy'?"—Pa could never acquire what he calls "the 'whom' habit."
Billy stepped manfully forward.
"You would recognize the name 'Billy,'" said he, "if it were joined with the rather profane surname with which it is, unfortunately, connected, 'from the Atlantic to the Missouri.' Mr. Blunt, you can not be ignorant of the sweet dream in which I have indulged myself with reference to your daughter. I know I am unworthy of her—"
"Oh, cut that short!" said Pa. "Take this grease off my face, and remove these infernal stage lights! There, Dolly—there! Mr. Helmerston, er—Billy—will start for Mexico within a month. If you—if you really want to go with him, why go!"
And so we're going, by way of Yellowstone Park.
CHAPTER IV
"You see," said Mr. Driscoll, when, after three days of independent wonder-gazing in the thirty square miles of the Lower Geyser Basin, his seven fares came together for departure, "as I told yeh, this trip is just gettin' good."