“Yes—doesn’t it? Looks just like an engagement ring. Maybe that’s what it is. I’m not saying.” Then, suddenly, “Where’s yours?”
“Mine? Oh, you mean my solitaire—like that? I’ve got one, only mine is set lower and—and it’s—” She stopped, a little confused. She didn’t want to say that the stone in this ring—which had been her mother’s engagement ring, and was now lying in the safe deposit box in the bank at Dawn along with some other jewelry and valuables that would come to her later—was larger and handsomer than Maybelle’s. Maybelle herself was turning her hand and flashing the gem with a great deal of satisfaction. Suddenly she stopped and asked in an aggrieved tone:
“Well? Aren’t you going to show me yours? I think you might—I trusted you to see mine.”
“I—I can’t,” Hilda faltered. And then as Maybelle continued to eye her. “It isn’t here.”
“Oh, all right—all right for you, Miss Hilda Van Brunt. Anyhow—I found out what I wanted to know. I thought Fayte was lying, but I see he told the truth—for once,” and she flounced into her own room.
Hilda was too angry to follow and ask what it was that Fayte had told the truth about. She learned of it later from Lefty Adams, who clerked in the store, and was almost like a member of the family at the Alamositas. She and Maybelle—Jinnie tagging along—had gone to buy marshmallows that evening, and Lefty watched a chance to say to her aside,
“No callers over to the house these days, hey? Not getting lonesome, are you? Oh, no—I reckon Fayte’s enough all by his own sweet self. The feller that’s got a girl’s promise usually aims to be enough.”
“Lefty, what do you mean by that?” Hilda asked. And when he explained that Fayte was telling all the boys that he and Hilda were as good as engaged—on the sly—she laughed; not because it was funny, or she liked it, but with a sudden appreciation of how probable that must look to any one on the outside. That laugh settled it. Her denials, though they finally became indignant, had no effect. She saw that Lefty, anyhow, was convinced, as Maybelle had been, that what Fayte had told was the truth.
As they came out onto the store porch carrying their tin boxes of marshmallows, Jinnie capering at their heels, Maybelle caught Hilda’s arm suddenly and shook it, exclaiming,
“Look there! Funny we didn’t see that as we went in.”