"Oh, no."
They watched and saw them coming down presently, but they took a better pathway. Miss Holmes seemed pleased with the plan. Laverne sprang in beside Mrs. Westbury.
"Perhaps the ladies——" Dick was disappointed.
"I want to sit here," the girl said rather imperiously. "And you know you won't let me drive."
"You'd be like that fellow you told of driving the chariot to the sun, I'm afraid. I don't dare trust any one except Nervy, the jockey, to ride her. It was immense on Sunday. You saw that she won. Mother's against having me enter her, and I don't do it often. But jimini! I'd like to. And ride her myself."
Mrs. Westbury had seen the Derby, where all the style of London went, and fortunes were lost and won. Dick was fascinated by the account.
They turned oceanward. Sandhills, stones, patches of verdure where one least expected, tangled depths of laurels and alder, manzanita, vines scrambling everywhere and such a wealth of bloom, then barren rocks and sand. Now you could see the glorious ocean, the great flocks of sea birds swirling, diving, flying so straight and swiftly that not a wing moved. Cries of all kinds, then from the landward side a strange, clear song that seemed to override the other. Seals thrusting up their shiny black heads and diving again, sunning themselves lazily on the rocks.
"Is there another country in the world like this?" exclaimed Mrs. Westbury. "And all down the coast! I stayed at Monterey before. We crossed the Isthmus and came up. It is wonderful."
Dick kept them out quite late to see the gorgeous sunset, and then would fain have taken them home with him. Laverne had her hands full of flowers that she had never seen before, and her eyes were lovely in their delight.
"I shall be spoiled. I shall want to see you every day. I wish there was no school," Mrs. Westbury said. "Oh, can't I come and visit you?" and the entreaty in her voice would have won a harder heart.