Pagina 116 van 439

Dunke stared at her. It was his night of surprises. He failed to

recognize the conventional teacher he knew in this bright-eyed,

full-throated young woman who fronted him so sure of herself. She

seemed to him to swim brilliantly in a tide of flushed beauty, in

spite of the dust and the stains of travel. She was in a

shapeless khaki riding-suit and a plain, gray, broad-brimmed

Stetson. But the one could not hide the flexible curves that made

so frankly for grace, nor the other the coppery tendrils that

escaped in fascinating disorder from under its brim.

"You hadn't ought to be out here. It ain't right."

"I don't remember asking you to act as a standard of right and

wrong for me."

He laughed awkwardly. "We ain't quarreling, are we, Miss

Margaret?"

"Certainly I am not. I don't quarrel with anybody but my

friends."