The country was beginning to irritate me, and I knew that if something didn't break loose pretty soon I'd be off somewhere.

Riding over to little buttes, and not meeting a soul on the way or seeing anything but a bare rock when you get there, grows monotonous in time, and rather gets on the nerves of a fellow.
When I came close up to the butte, however, I saw a flutter of skirts on the pinnacle, and it made a difference in my gait; I went up all out of breath, scrambling as if my life hung on a few seconds, and calling myself a different kind of fool for every step I took.

I kept assuring myself, over and over, that it was only Edith, and that there was no need to get excited about it.

But all the while I knew, down deep down in the thumping chest of me, that it wasn't Edith.

Edith couldn't make all that disturbance in my circulatory system, not in a thousand years.
She was sitting on the same rock, and she was dressed in the same adorable riding outfit with a blue wisp of veil wound somehow on her gray felt hat, and the same blue roan was dozing, with dragging bridle-reins, a few rods down the other side of the peak.