"Then what would you advise us to do?"
"Hold tight and not sell till you have had a chance to look matters over on the ground—not from a distance."
"Well," said Mr. Nelson rising resignedly and knocking the ashes from his cigar, "I suppose that settles it. I shall have to leave my business to go to smash," he added, with a chuckle, "while I take my family into a barbarous land where every second man you meet has designs on a well-filled pocketbook——"
But he got no further, for Betty had run over to him and turned him imperiously around till his smiling eyes looked down into her gleeful ones.
"Daddy," she cried, "do you really mean it? We can all go to Gold Run—you and mother and the girls? We'll have to have the girls, you know!" she ended on a pleading note.
"Oh yes, of course," said Mr. Nelson resignedly. "We will have to have the girls."
It was a very radiant Betty who, a few minutes later, saw Allen Washburn to the door.
"And to think," she murmured, while Allen smiled down at her, "that I didn't like that perfect angel, Peter Levine, at first. Why, I should have welcomed him with open arms!"
"Why?" asked Allen, taken by surprise.
"Don't you know?" asked Betty, mischievously wide-eyed. "If he hadn't happened along just when he did our glorious adventure would have dwindled into a might-have-been. Why, I could love him for it."