Captain Rugley was as eager as a boy for his old partner’s appearance.
“And I’ve been wishing all these years,” he said, “while you were growing up, Frances, to dress you up in a lot of this fancy jewelry. It would have been for your mother if she had lived.”
“But you don’t want me to look like a South Sea Island princess, do you, Daddy?” Frances said, laughing. “I can see that the belt and bracelet I wore the night Pratt stopped here rather startled him. He’s used to seeing ladies dressed up, in Amarillo, too.”
“Pooh! In the cities women are ablaze with jewels. Your mother and I went to Chicago once, and we went to the opera. Say! that was a show!
“Let me tell you, there are things in that chest that will outshine anything in the line of ornaments that that Pratt Sanderson–or any other Amarillo person–ever saw.”
The girl was quite sure that this desire on her father’s part of arraying her in the gaudy jewels from the old chest was bound to make her the laughing-stock of the people who were coming out from Amarillo to see the Pageant of the Panhandle.
But what could she do about it? His wish was fathered by his love for her. She must wear the gems to please him, for Frances would never do anything to hurt his feelings, for the world.
A good many of their friends, of course–people like good Mrs. Peckham–would never realize the incongruity of a girl being bedecked like a barbarian princess. But Frances wondered what the girl from Boston would say to Pratt Sanderson about it, if she chanced to see Frances so adorned?
She had an opportunity of seeing something more of the Boston girl shortly, for in a day or two Pratt Sanderson came over for the grey pony he had left at the Peckham ranch, and Frances had led back to the Bar-T for him.
And with Pratt trailed along Mrs. Bill Edwards and the visitors whom Frances had met twice before.