"I didn't know you had a girl, Harshaw," Tom began seductively.
"Well, I haven't, you know," said Harshaw. "There was one I wanted badly enough, a few years ago," he added with engaging frankness.
"When was it you first began to pine for her? About the period of second dentition?"
"Oh, betimes; and betimes I was disappointed."
"Well, unless it was for the girl herself, I'd keep out of that Snake River," my husband advised.
Kitty's face wore a slightly strained expression of perfect vacancy.
"Do you know who Harshaw's 'girl' was?" I asked her the other night, as we were undressing,—without an idea that she wouldn't see where the joke came in. She was standing, with her hair down, between the canvas curtains of our tent. It looks straight out toward the Sand Springs Fall, and Kitty worships there awhile every night before she goes to bed.
"No," she said. "I was never much with Cecil Harshaw. It is the families that have always known each other." The simple child! She hadn't understood him, or would she not understand? Which was it? I can't make out whether she is really simple or not. She is too clever to be so very simple; yet the cleverness of a young girl's mind, centred on a few ideas, is mainly in spots. But now I think she has brought this incident to bear upon that precious theory of hers, that Harshaw offered himself from a sense of duty. Great good may it do her!
The Sand Springs Fall, a perfect gem, is directly opposite our camp, facing west across the lagoon. We can feast our eyes upon it at all hours of the day and night. Tom has told Kitty, in the way of business, that he has no use for that fall. She may draw it or not, as she likes. She does draw it; she draws it, and water-colors it, and chalks it in colored crayons, and India-inks it, loading on the Chinese white; and she charcoals it, in moonlight effects, on a gray-blue paper. But do it whatever way she will, she never can do it.
"Oh, you exquisite, hopeless thing! Why can't I let you alone!" she cries; "and why can't you let me alone!"