John shook his head.
“I do not know,” he said. “I have with me a power of attorney from the Misses Gates, which Wardell Force sent me, to do with their land as I deem best. I am too old to begin a career as a rancher.”
“Don’t you intend to complete the drillings and sell your oil?” the singer asked.
“Are you going to drill for oil on your land?” Uncle John asked in turn. “It must be there, as well as on mine.”
“No, I certainly do not,” Miss Bedelle replied with vigor. “It will not run away. It has been there a million years already.”
“Then I shan’t,” John Trent said. “Oil wells would destroy all the loveliness you have created here.”
“Then sell me the property,” Miss Bedelle proposed. “Have it appraised, if you wish, with all the extra value the oil gives it, and I will buy at that price.”
“You may have it at any price you may set as being fair,” John Trent declared. “The Misses Gates and I are in no need of money.”
“Then we shall discuss the details later,” the singer said. “Doris, won’t you sing now? I will accompany you on the piano.”
Doris was frightened at the thought of displaying her immature voice before a grand opera star who had received the plaudits of three continents. What should she sing?
“May I start with something simple?” she asked, looking through the sheaves of music on the piano and selecting “Swanee River.”
“One of my favorites,” cried Miss Bedelle, as she struck the opening chords.
Doris threw aside her nervousness and began the sweet old song without faltering. At its conclusion Miss Bedelle flashed the girl a smile and played the opening bars of “Old Black Joe,” which Doris sang as an encore.
“Splendid!” she cried, rising and leading the applause. “You are gifted with a real voice, Doris! In a year or two you must come to the Metropolitan and I shall arrange an audition for you!”
“Do-do you really think I can hope to sing in opera?” Doris quavered.
“You shall, indeed you shall,” Miss Bedelle said with genuine enthusiasm. “I shall be proud to have you as my protegee. Now let us try something operatic.”
Doris sang in German and in French, and then Miss Bedelle asked her to play accompaniments for her while the singer rendered some of the more famous of her roles from grand opera.
“What a magnificent ruby ring,” she said suddenly to Doris, while the guests were applauding.
“Sh-sh!” Doris cautioned. “I will tell you about it some other time.”
Later in the evening, while the others were chatting together, Miss Bedelle led Doris out of doors, and there the girl told her the story of the ring with which readers of the previous volumes in this series are familiar.
The romantic account finished, Miss Bedelle said that she, too, had a confidence to share with Doris.
“I know of the strange coincidence of my brother being a stowaway on the airplane,” she began. “I know you have caught him at other escapades. I must explain for him.
“Charles was a talented and promising boy until his fourteenth year,” Miss Bedelle continued. “That was three years ago. Then, in a football game at the prep school to which I sent him—we are orphans like yourself, Doris—his head struck a goal post. For days he was unconscious, and for nearly two years he was an invalid. Then he seemed to recover completely.
“However, the blow did something to warp his poor brain and he has been in one scrape after another ever since. Some of them required every influence I could summon, as well as great sums for damages, to prevent his being sent to prison or the reformatory. Even on his way out here he committed some malicious mischief at Los Lobos which caused me expense and worry. I have just returned from there.
“Now that he is safely in my custody I am going to send him to a sanitarium where the best doctors and surgeons of the country will help restore him to normal young manhood. I just thought I would explain to you. It is really not his fault that he is wild and unruly.”
Lolita Bedelle pressed a filmy handkerchief to her eyes. However, when the two singers, the one with many triumphs, the other with her successes still to come, returned to the living room Lolita Bedelle was once more her gay and natural self.
“I must go East to prepare for the coming season,” she announced. “In two or three days I shall leave G Clef for the winter. So why should we not make a party of the return East? We’ll all fly home together!”
Doris and Kitty and the boys looked at one another with delight, and then turned expectantly toward Mrs. Mallow and John Trent.
“Thank you very much, Miss Bedelle,” John Trent said, rising and bowing with old-time courtesy. “I am going directly through to spend some time in Southern California.”
“As for me,” Mrs. Mallow said, “I am very happy to have had the opportunity to fly out here. But I should be very, very much happier returning by train.”
The young folks’ faces fell.
“However,” added Mrs. Mallow, “if the others wish to accept your invitation, I have no hesitancy in giving my permission.”
“Hoorah!” shouted Marshall.
“Good!” Dave exploded.
“And then for school,” Doris cried, turning to Kitty. “Won’t we have a story to tell the girls at Barry Manor? It will seem dull there, after this summer, Kitty.”
“I don’t know,” her chum laughed. “I think to be with ‘Doris Force at Barry Manor’ will prove to be anything but dull.”
FINDING THE LOST TREASURE, by Helen M. Persons [Part 1]
CHAPTER I
A MYSTERIOUS PAPER
“W-1755-15x12-6754,” read Desiré slowly. “What does it mean?”
“What does what mean, Dissy?” asked her younger sister, who was rolling a ball across the floor to little René.
“Just some figures on an old paper I found, dear. I must tell Jack about them. Do you know where he is?”
“Out there somewhere, I guess,” replied the child, with a vague gesture indicating the front yard.
Desiré flung back her short dark curls and crossed the room to a window where sturdy geraniums raised their scarlet clusters to the very top of the panes. It was the custom in that part of Nova Scotia to make a regular screen of blossoming plants in all front windows, sometimes even in those of the cellar. Peering between two thick stems, she could see her older brother sitting on the doorstep, gazing out across St. Mary’s Bay which lay like a blue, blue flag along the shore.
Crossing the narrow hall and opening the outside door, Desiré dropped down beside the boy and thrust a time-yellowed
