“Good biscuits!” Adair MacKenzie bit off a piece of their lightness the evening the present story opens. They were all sitting at the Sherwood dinner table. There he sat, chewing reflectively, as he glanced down the table at young Nan.
“So you helped crown the good queen,” he remarked, “And it didn’t go to your head. You’re a good lass. You Blakes,” he turned to Mrs. Sherwood now, “were always a bunch of modest creatures. That’s why I like you. Now, Bessie there,” he pointed to Bess who had stayed for dinner, “she’s not so modest, but she’s kind and loyal. She’s a little spoiled, but she’ll get by.”
Bess blushed all shades of the rainbow at Adair’s frankness. Used to being babied and somewhat pampered at home, his outspokenness troubled her. She felt strangely like crying. Nan caught her eye and smiled encouragingly. Mrs. Sherwood patted her hand beneath the tablecloth. And Alice, well, Alice was a dear, for she turned the conversation toward school, and both Nan and Bess utterly forgot themselves in telling of the horse show in which they had both taken part during the last week at school.
“So you think you can ride, eh?” Adair MacKenzie was secretly pleased at both of the young girls. “Well, we’ll see. I’ll put you each on a Mexican mule and let you try to climb a mountain and see what happens.” He chuckled at the thought.
Alice laughed merrily at this. “Well, you’ll never get me on one,” she vowed. “Once was enough. Instead of the mule pulling me up the narrow path, I pulled the mule up. I never worked harder in my life.”
“Oh, my sweet, you never worked at all.” Adair shook his finger at his daughter. “But you’ll work this summer—if that old housekeeper of ours keeps her resolution not to go down to that dirty hole which we call a hacienda. The words are hers,” he explained to Nan and Bess.
“She once, when she was a very young girl, spent a summer on a sugar beet farm here in the north. A lot of Mexicans worked on it. They were miserably treated and poorly paid. As a result their huts were like hovels. She saw some of them and now she says that wild horses couldn’t drag her into that country down there. She’d rather see me starve first. But I’ll get her yet.” Adair MacKenzie smiled as though he liked opposition. “I’ll show her who is boss,” he ended.
“Of course you will, daddy,” Alice agreed. “But now tell us, when are we going? How long are we going to stay? And whom have you invited?”
This last question put Adair MacKenzie in a corner and he knew it. Really, a very kind and extremely impulsive soul, when he went on these summer jaunts for pleasure he was apt to go about for weeks, inviting all his friends. As a result, no matter how large the house was he rented, it was always too small, and no matter what preparation Alice made for guests, they were always inadequate.
Now, as he sat thinking, a mischievous light came into his eye. “There is only one that I’ve invited,” he teased, “besides these girls that will interest you.”