"I'm afraid I'm causing you a lot of worry over me," said she, smiling sadly as Patsy turned toward her; "and that is ungrateful when I remember how kind you have all been. Why, these hours since I met you have seemed like fairyland. I shall treasure them as long as I live. There must be another train to Leadville soon, and I'll take that. As soon as I am ready I will go to the depot and wait there."
Patsy looked at her reflectively. The poor child was called upon to solve a queer problem—one which might well have bewildered the brain of a more experienced person.
"Tell me," she said; "why should you go to Leadville at all, now that you have no friend or relative there to care for you?"
"My ticket is to Leadville, you know," replied Myrtle. "If I did not go I would waste the money it cost."
Patsy laughed at this.
"You're a wonderfully impractical child," she said, deftly assisting Myrtle to finish dressing. "What you really need is some one to order you around and tell you what to do. So you must stop thinking about yourself, for a time, and let us do the thinking. Here—sit in this chair by the window. Do you want Mumbles in your lap? All right. Now gaze upon the scenery until I come back. There's a man washing windows across the street; watch and see if he does his work properly."
Then she went away to join a conference in Uncle John's sitting room. Major Doyle was speaking when she entered and his voice was coldly ironical.
"The temperature outside is six degrees above freezing," he observed. "The clerk downstairs says the snow is nine feet deep over the mountain trails and the wind would cut an iron beam in two. If you take an automobile to California, John, you must put it on snowshoes and connect it with a steam heating-plant."
Uncle John, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, paced thoughtfully up and down the room.
"Haggerty said—"