She grimaced. “Not so you’d notice it. I ain’t goin’ back this fall. You know the Yellowstone Company’ll land you just as many miles from the Park as they brought you, and in any direction you say. Me for Los Angeles. I ain’t afraid I can’t make my living, and I’m sick o’ bein’ snowed on, winters, without any furs.”

Rosalie looked enviously at the other’s snapping black eyes.

“Wonder what savage we’ll go over with,” pursued Miss Hickey, stuffing her nightgown into a bag, and nonchalantly running her comb and toothbrush into her stocking.

“Over? Over?”

“Yes, over to Norris in the stage.”

“Do you mean that savages drive them?” asked Rosalie, her eyes dilating.

Miss Hickey laughed. “Oh, you’re more fun than a barrel o’ monkeys,” she observed. “The drivers certainly are savages. You can ask anybody in the Park.”

[57]

[57]

Rosalie smiled faintly as she began twisting up her hair. “Oh, that’s some more Park English, is it?” she asked.

“I hope it’ll be Jasper,” said Miss Hickey, “but we won’t get to sit by him, anyway. The dudes all fight for the driver’s seat. I’m going down now. Hurry up, Baby, or you’ll catch it.”

Rosalie obeyed in a panic, and was soon ready to follow. She dreaded the ordeal of the breakfast-room, and prayed that she might be delivered from the Bruces’ table. Her heart came up in her throat when she saw them enter the door; but she was not obliged to wait upon them. As it happened, Miss Hickey had that station, and Rosalie devoted herself assiduously to a deaf gentleman who was traveling with his wife and a young woman at sight of whom Rosalie colored. “Oh, how small this big world is!” she thought; “but she won’t remember me. We seldom met!”

The ordeal of breakfast was at last over, and Rosalie with relief yielded herself to Miss Hickey’s orders, and presently the girls stood on the great piazza of the hotel, but on the edge of the crowd, watching the systematic filling of the stages which were starting on the tour around the Park.

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