Frieda glanced around to see Jean leaning over the water with her hair covering her face. It did not seem worth while to disturb her, so without a word, Frieda slipped away to their tent to search for more thread for her sewing.
Jean could not hear very well at this time had she spoken, for the brook made a roary, gurgling noise of its own in her ears, and her head swam from being held upside down so long.
"Crunch, crunch, crunch." Some one was marching along the side of the stream right in her direction. Jean did not trouble to take her hair out of the water or to look around. Of course it could be no one but Frieda!
"Well, I never in all my life!" she heard a perfectly strange masculine voice exclaim. "I know I have walked straight into fairy land, and you must be the queen who has brought all this magic to pass over night, for I passed this stream just two days ago and there wasn't a sign of a tent or a caravan or a princess anywhere around."
Jean flung back her long, brown hair with a gasp of sheer surprise, and the drops of crystal water showered around her like the diamonds that fell from the mouth of the good sister in the fairy story.
"I have been washing my hair," she announced to the strange youth, and then because her explanation was so obvious, they both laughed. "You see, I hadn't the faintest idea anybody could turn up in this wilderness except us," she explained, not very grammatically. "We are making a caravan trip through the state."
"I suppose I ought to say I am awfully sorry I intruded," the young fellow answered. "Of course, you know, I would say it if I had bobbed into a lady's boudoir unexpectedly, but I am so glad to see some one in this out-of-the-way place that I haven't a social fib at my disposal. Don't you think you could let me stop to rest and perhaps talk to you a few minutes?"
Jean drew herself up in an effort to look as dignified and unapproachable as she felt sure Jack and Olive would have done under the same circumstances. Far be it from either of them to engage in a friendly conversation with a stranger, even in a trackless waste; but to save her life Jean couldn't keep her eyes from shining mischievously. The water was trickling down her back until her shoulders were damp through her shirtwaist. Knowing she looked dreadfully foolish, she could not make up her mind to do anything so unattractive as deliberately to squeeze the water out of her hair or roll up her head in a towel before this handsome young fellow.
He was somewhat older than Donald Harmon or Frank Kent, and his eyes were as blue and his hair as golden as Siegfried's, thought romantic Jean, if only he were dressed in a suit of silver armor instead of dust-covered corduroys. The traveler had a knapsack strapped over his shoulders and a gun in his hand; his whole appearance suggested a long tramp.
Jean gazed at him meaningly. Ordinary intelligence might suggest to him that he turn his back for a few minutes while she repaired her damaged toilet, but the young fellow evidently had no such amiable intention. He seated himself by the edge of the brook a few feet from Jean. "My name is Ralph Merrit. I'm a mining engineer," he announced briefly.