"Where are you all going? Where's Charley?" asked Felicia.
"She's nearly frantic about you," exclaimed Roger. "We were all going to look for you."
Felicia's liquid eyes widened with sudden understanding. "Put me down, Dick, I want to go to Charley."
"Here she comes now," said Ernest.
Charley was breathless with running. Felicia set her basket in the sand and rushed into her sister's arms. The men all started explaining at once. Charley, still clasping Felicia, listened, then looked down on the curly head resting against her heart.
"Felicia, how could you be so naughty," she asked gently.
"Now, don't you scold her, Charley," protested Dick.
"Do I ever scold any one, Dick? Only Felicia must realize that she did a very dangerous thing that she must never, never do again."
"How do you mean, dangerous?" asked Felicia. "Did I make you feel badly, Charley?"
"You made me sick at heart with fear, Felicia," replied Charley.
Felicia gave a great sob. "Oh, I wouldn't do that for anything!"
"I move," said Roger, "that we go on over to the Sun Plant and that the two ladies talk this over after supper. And I'll carry Felicia pig-a-back."
The motion was unanimously carried. Ernest went up to help Dick with the chores and Roger and Gustav prepared supper while Charley sat on the bench with Felicia in her lap, and directed operations. The pot of beans and the biscuit she had brought in the basket made the meal-getting a simple matter. Mrs. von Minden was almost human, that evening. She sat with the young people during their meal and for an hour afterward, once rising, unexpectedly, to kiss Charley.
Felicia went to sleep when half way through supper, just after she had given Roger his present.
"It's a little clock," she said, holding out a small steam gauge, rusty and battered. "I found it in one of the sheds up on the mountain, where I stopped to rest."
Roger looked at it curiously. "That was an expensive gauge in its day," he said. "How do you suppose she happened to find it?"
"Harder not to find it," replied Dick. "The ranges are full of deserted mines. They took out all the free gold, then tried to work out the rest, found it too expensive, went broke and walked out. There's enough fine machinery up in the mountains to make you believe what folks say around here, that more money goes into the ground than ever comes out of it."
Roger looked at Dick thoughtfully. "I'm glad to know that," he said. "Felicia's given me a sure-enough present, haven't you, little girl?"