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as it had been for centuries, and as it will be for centuries to come.

“Life is like that,” she said musingly.

“Like what, miss?” asked the driver, beside whom she sat, who had been wondering whether this unusually beautiful passenger were of the sociable sort.

Patricia flushed and looked surprised. She had not intended to utter her thought aloud.

“Like the clouds on the mountain,” she explained unwillingly. “It comes and goes, is nothing worth mentioning, and leaves the universe as it found it.”

The driver pondered this. He had not expectad mournful philosophy in one whom he had judged to be “one of the girls.”

“That’s so,” he agreed vaguely, squinting at the mountain. “Ever been up to the top?” he asked, unwilling to allow the conversation to die now that the ice had been broken.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Have you ever climbed the mountain?”

“No.”

The driver failed to observe the finality in the monosyllable, nor did he seem to feel the coldness of the rare “Indeed?” and “Quite so” which were her only contributions to the conversation on the perils of mountaineering, the beauty of Christchurch and the horrors of earthquakes in general and the Hawke’s Bay one in particular, with which the fifty-mile journey to Hawera was beguiled.

“Staying here to-night, miss?” he asked her as he halted the car outside a hotel in Hawera. “You can pick up a bus for Wanganui this afternoon if you like. That is, of course, if you’re going on?”

“I’ll stay here, I think,” decided Patricia. “Will you help me with my bags?”

“Certainly, miss. Hope I have the pleasure of taking you back sometime. I don’t get many passengers as sociable as you are.”

Patricia wondered if that were meant as sarcasm. If it were, the driver showed a Christian spirit in the