“I suppose there is no use trying to contend against the rights of a brand-new husband,” returned Kitty, “but it’s a promise, that you will come to me as soon as your camping trip is over?”

“It’s a promise,” agreed Helen.  “You see, that’s really part of Stanford’s plan; I was so sure you would want me, you know.”

“Want you?  I should say I do want you,” cried Kitty, “and I need you, too.”

Something in her voice made Helen look at her questioningly, but Kitty only smiled.

“I’ll tell you all about it when there is more time.”

“Let me see,” said Helen.  “There used to be—­why, of course, that nice looking man you were talking to when I recognized you—­Phil Acton.”  She looked across the street as she spoke, but Phil had gone.

“Please don’t, Helen dear,” said Kitty, “that was only my schoolgirl nonsense.  When I came back home I found how impossible it all was.  But I must run back to the folks now.  Won’t you come and meet them?”

Before Helen could answer someone shouted, “They’re getting ready for the start,” and everybody looked down the hill toward the place where the racing machines were sputtering and roaring in their clouds of blue smoke.

Helen caught up the field glasses to look, saying, “We can’t go now, Kitty.  You stay here with us until after the race is started; then we’ll go.”

As Helen lowered the glasses Stanford, who had come to stand beside the automobile, reached out his hand.  “Let me have a look, Helen.  They say my old friend, Judge Morris, is the official starter.”  He put the field glasses to his eyes.  “There he is all right, as big as life; finest man that ever lived.  Look, Helen.”  He returned the glasses to his wife “If you want to see a genuine western lawyer, a scholar and a gentleman, take a look at that six-foot-three or four down there in the gray clothes.”

“I see him,” said Helen, “but there seems to be some thing the matter; there he goes back to the machines.  Now he’s laying down the law to the drivers.”

“They won’t put over anything on Morris,” said Stanford admiringly.

Then a deep, kindly voice at his elbow said, “Howdy, Manning!  Ain’t you got time to speak to your old friends?”

Stanford whirled and, with a glad exclamation, grasped the Dean’s outstretched hand.  Still holding fast to the cattleman, he again turned to his wife, who was looking down at them with smiling interest.  “Helen, this is Mr. Baldwin—­the Dean, you know.”

“Indeed, I ought to know the Dean,” she cried, giving him her hand.  “Stanford has told me so much about you that I am in love with you already.”

“And I”—­retorted the Dean, looking up at her with his blue eyes twinkling approval—­“I reckon I’ve always been in love with you.  I’m sure glad to see that this young man has justified his reputation for good judgment.  Have they got any more girls like you back East?  ’Cause if they have, I’ll sure be obliged to take a trip to that part of the world before I get too old.”