“No. No—you’re mistaken. Uncle Hank didn’t see any one from—from over here.”
“But you did.”
Hilda got to her feet, saying decidedly:
“If you will keep on talking about that—I’m going down where the others are.”
“Not yet.” Fayte rose too. They stood a moment. Tall, handsome, a man now, he was, after all, very much the same as the small boy who had blown her doll to pieces—and thought it was funny.
“I don’t want to quarrel,” she began, “but——”
“That’s all right,” Fayte laughed. “Good way to begin. Hilda, you’re going to like me a lot, before we’re done. You can’t get away from me. Better not try to. And you’re too pretty a girl to put on touch-me-not airs.”
CHAPTER XXIV
“INVITATION TO THE DANCE”
From the first, Fayte Marchbanks’s presence at the Alamositas affected the whole atmosphere there—and quite differently from anything Hilda could have imagined. Maybelle had said they would have more fun if he were home. Hilda wouldn’t have put it just that way, exactly, yet everything was somehow changed—and rather exciting.
That very first evening at the dinner-table he began it. Hilda was conscious of some strain back of the general talk. It ran on jerkily for a time, and then Fayte sent one of his narrowed, sliding glances from her face to the colonel’s and remarked: