"I'd be safe with you, though," said Hope, smiling persuasively upon the three men. "Won't you take me with you, please?"
"Hope," said young Langham in the tone of the elder brother's brief authority, "you must go home at once."
Hope smiled wickedly. "I don't want to," she said.
"I'll bet you a box of cigars I can beat you to the veranda by fifty yards," said MacWilliams, turning his horse's head.
Hope clasped her sailor hat in one hand and swung her whip with the other. "I think not," she cried, and disappeared with a flutter of skirts and a scurry of flying pebbles.
"At times," said Clay, "MacWilliams shows an unexpected knowledge of human nature."
"Yes, he did quite right," assented Langham, nodding his head mysteriously. "We've no time for girls at present, have we?"
"No, indeed," said Clay, hiding any sign of a smile.
Langham breathed deeply at the thought of the part he was to play in this coming struggle, and remained respectfully silent as they trotted toward the city. He did not wish to disturb the plots and counterplots that he was confident were forming in Clay's brain, and his devotion would have been severely tried had he known that his hero's mind was filled with a picture of a young girl in a blue shirt-waist and a whipcord riding-skirt.
Clay sent for Stuart to join them at the restaurant, and MacWilliams arriving at the same time, the four men seated themselves conspicuously in the centre of the café and sipped their chocolate as though unconscious of any imminent danger, and in apparent freedom from all responsibilities and care. While MacWilliams and Langham laughed and disputed over a game of dominoes, the older men exchanged, under cover of their chatter, the few words which they had met to speak.