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THE PINK SASH

liberately, and roll up his sleeves, and square his jaw, and list out, one by one, the things that he wants in the presumable measure of lifetime that's left him and go ahead and get them!"

"Why, surely," said the young woman, without the slightest trace of surprise. Something in her matter-of-fact acquiescence made Donas Guthrie smile a trifle shrewdly.

"Oh ! So you've got your own list all made out? "he quizzed. Around the rather tired-looking corners of Esther Davidson's mouth the tiniest pos- sible flicker of amusement began to show.

"No, not all made out, "she answered frankly.

You see, I wasn't thirty until yesterday."

Stooping with cheerful unconcern to blow a little fluff of tobacco ash from his own khaki-colored knees to hers, Guthrie eyed her delightedly from under his heavy brows.

"Oh, this is working out very neatly and pleas- antly," he mused, all agrin."Ever since you joined our camping party at Laramie, jumping off the train as white-faced and out of breath as though }you'd been running to catch up with us all the way from Boston indeed, ever since you first wrote me at Morristown, asking full particulars about the whole expedition and begging us to go to the Sierra Ne- vadas instead and blotted Sierra twice and crossed

it out once and then in final petulance spelled it

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