"Oh, you're the hero of the occasion! I cut a sorry figure in it. I suppose, though, that as the maiden in distress I'll get a little glory—just a little."
"And your picture in the Sunday papers."
"Horrors, no! But you will appear on your fiery steed swinging the lasso."
He threw up his hands.
"That would never do! It would ruin my social reputation."
"In Boston?"
"No; down there they'd like it. It would be proof positive of the woolliness of the West. Golf playing interrupted by a herd of wild cattle—cowboys, lassoes—Buffalo Bill effects. Down East they're always looking for Western atmosphere."
"You don't dislike the West very much, do you?" asked Evelyn. "We aren't so bad, do you think?"
"Dislike it?" John looked at her. He had never liked anything so much as this place and hour. "I altogether love it," he declared; and then he was conscious of having used a verb not usual in his vocabulary.
"And so you learned how to do all the cowboy tricks up in Wyoming?" Evelyn went on. "I wish Annie Warren had seen that!" and she laughed; it seemed to John that she was always laughing.