I’m about famished.”
“I haven’t heard the train whistle yet, though it must be due,” replied Mrs. Pennington. “You and Boy make so much noise swimming that we’ll miss Gabriel’s trump if we happen to be in the pool at the time!”
The colonel, Custer, and Grace Evans dived simultaneously and, coming up together, raced for the shallow end where Mrs. Evans and her hostess were preparing to leave the pool. The girl, reaching the hand rail first, arose laughing and triumphant.
“My foot slipped as I dived,” cried the younger Pennington, wiping the water from his eyes, “or I’d have caught you!”
“No alibis, Boy!” laughed the colonel. “Grace beat you fair and square.”
“Race you back for a dollar, Grace!” challenged the young man.
“You’re on,” she cried. “One, two, three — go!”
They were off. The colonel, who had preceded them leisurely into the deep water, swam close to his son as the latter was passing a yard in the lead. Simultaneously, the young man’s progress ceased. With a Comanche-like yell, he turned upon his father, and the two men grappled and went down. When they came up, spluttering and laughing, the girl was climbing out of the pool.
“You win, Grace!” shouted the colonel.
“It’s a frame-up!” cried Custer. “He grabbed me by the ankle!”
“Well, who had a better right?” demanded the girl. “He’s referee.”
“He’s a fine mess for a referee!” grumbled Custer good-naturedly.
“Run along and get your dollar and pay up like a gentleman,” admonished his father.
“What do you get out of it? What do you pay him, Grace?”
They were still bantering as they entered the house and sought their several rooms to dress.
Guy Evans strolled from the walled garden of the swimming pool to the open arch that broke the long pergola beneath which the driveway ran along the north side of the house. Here, he had an unobstructed view of the broad valley stretching away to the mountains in the distance.
Down the center of the valley, a toy train moved noiselessly. As he watched it, he saw a puff of white rise from the tiny engine. It rose and melted in the evening air before the thin, clear sound of the whistle reached his ears. The train crawled behind the green of trees and disappeared.
He knew that it had stopped at the station and that a slender, girlish figure was alighting with a smile for the porter and a gay word for the conductor who had carried her back and forth for years upon her occasional visits to the city a hundred miles away. Now, the chauffeur was taking her bag and carrying it to the roadster that she would drive home along the wide, straight boulevard that crossed the valley — utterly ruining a number of perfectly good speed laws.
Two minutes elapsed, and the train crawled out from behind the trees and continued its way up the valley — a little black caterpillar with spots of yellow twinkling along its sides. As twilight deepened, the lights from ranch houses and villages sprinkled the floor of the valley. Like jewels scattered from a careless hand, they fell singly and in little clusters; and then, the stars, serenely superior, came forth to assure the glory of a perfect California night.
The headlights of a motor car turned in at the driveway. Guy went to the east porch and looked in at the living room door where some of the family had already collected.
“Eva’s coming!” he announced.
She had been gone since the day before, but she might have been returning from a long trip abroad if every one’s eagerness to greet her was any criterion. Unlike city dwellers, these people had never learned to conceal the lovelier emotions of their hearts behind a mask of assumed indifference. Perhaps the fact that they were not forever crowded shoulder to shoulder with strangers permitted them an enjoyable naturalness which the dweller in the wholesale districts of humanity can never know; for what a man may reveal of his heart among friends he hides from the unsympathetic eyes of others — though it may be the noblest of his possessions. With a rush, the car topped the hill, swung up the driveway, and stopped at the corner of the house. A door flew open, and the girl leaped from the driver’s seat.
“Hello, everybody!” she cried.
Snatching a kiss from her brother as she passed him, she fairly leaped upon her mother, hugging, kissing, laughing, dancing, and talking all at once. Espying her father, she relinquished a disheveled and laughing mother and dived for him.
“Most adorable Pops!” she cried as he caught her in his arms. “Are you glad to have your little nuisance back? I’ll bet you’re not. Do you love me? You won’t when you know how much I’ve spent, but oh, Popsy, I had such a good time! That’s all there was to it, and oh, Momsie, who, who, who do you suppose I met? Oh, you’d never guess — never, never!”
“Whom did you meet?” asked her mother.
“Yes, little one, whom did you meet?” inquired her brother.
“And he’s perfectly gorgeous,” continued the girl, as if there had been no interruption; “and I danced with him — oh, such divine dancing! Oh, Guy Evans! Why how do you do? I never saw you.”
The young man nodded glumly.
“How are you, Eva?” he said.
“Mrs. Evans is here, too, dear,” her mother reminded her.
The girl curtsied before her mother’s guest and then threw her arm about the older woman’s neck.
“Oh, Aunt Mae!” she cried. “I’m so excited; but you should have seen him, and, Momsie, I got the cutest riding hat!” They were moving toward the living room door, which Guy was holding open. “Guy, I got you the splendiferousest Christmas present!”
“Help!” cried her brother, collapsing into a porch chair. “Don’t you know that I have a weak heart? Do your Christmas shopping early — do it in April! Oh, Lord, can you beat it?” he demanded of the others. “Can you beat it?”
“I think it was mighty nice of Eva to remember me at all,” said Guy, thawing perceptibly.
“What is it?” asked Custer. “I’ll bet you got him a pipe.”
“However in the world did you guess?” demanded Eva.
Custer rocked from side to side in his chair, laughing. “What are you laughing at? Idiot!” cried the girl. “How did you guess I got him a pipe?”
“Because he never smokes anything but cigarettes.”
“You’re horrid!”
He pulled her down onto his lap and kissed her. “Dear little one!” he cried. Taking her head between his hands, he shook it. “Hear ‘em rattle!”
“But I love a pipe,” stated Guy emphatically. “The trouble is, I never had a really nice one before.”
“There!” exclaimed the girl triumphantly. “And you know Sherlock Holmes always smoked a pipe.”
