"Just a minute, York. I got these with the dew on them—all prairie flowers. I thought Jerry might be up to see me to-day. I went out after them for her," Laura explained, as she arranged the showy blossoms in vases about the rooms.
York dropped behind his day-old paper, calling after her, indifferently: "I doubt if they are worth it. You must have gone to the far side of 'Kingussie' for them. I doubt, too, if she comes here to-day, but I haven't any doubt that I am hungry and likely to get hungrier before you get ready for breakfast."
"Coming, coming." Laura came hastily to the table. "I forgot you in my interest in Jerry."
"A prevalent disease in New Eden right now," York said, behind his paper. "Ponk nearly fell down on getting me a chauffeur for to-day; the superintendent didn't get the quarterlies to our Sunday-school class on time yesterday morning; the Big Dipper took the wrong pew and kept it, and now my breakfast must wait—all on account of this Jerry girl."
"Mournful, mournful!" Laura declared. "Such a little girl, too! I'd like to tell you what your Big Dipper said about Jerry Saturday, but I mustn't."
"Saturday was a rainy day," York commented, knowing Laura would answer no questions if he should ask them now.
"All the more reason why the Big Dipper should come over to copy my new hat for one of the Poser girls up the Sage Brush, and then fall to questions and conclusions," Laura insisted.
"I thought yesterday was the grand opening for that lid of yours. Where did the B. D. see it?" York would not ask for what he wanted most to know.
"It had positively never been out of the box since it came here," Laura declared. "But pshaw, York, it is the gossip you want to know, and I'm really concerned about that."
"I'm not. I am really concerned about where Stellar Bahrr saw your hat." York was very serious and his sister was puzzled for the minute. He never looked that way when he joked—never.