“That’s the spirit!” Nan’s cousin applauded. “Never back down on anything you set out to do. When you start a thing, finish it. That’s the way people get places. Made me what I am. Never started a thing yet I didn’t finish.”
Nan looking at him, believed it. He had the air about him of one that accomplishes things. You could see it in the way he walked, the way he talked. “Doesn’t make any difference,” he continued, “what it is, a school lesson, a vacation, a housekeeping task for your mother. If you begin it, finish it.” He said this last so emphatically that Nan looked about her half expecting to find something that she should finish right away.
“Doesn’t make any difference,” he went on, “how hard the thing is or how much you want to do something else. Do the thing you first started and do it as well as you possibly can. Understand what I mean?” Nan’s cousin looked at her very intently for a moment and then he ruffled her pretty brown hair with his rough hand. “Of course you do, child,” he smiled at her. “You’re as bright as they make them.”
“Dad, oh, dad!” Alice MacKenzie joined the two. “You’re wanted. The car’s ready and the driver wants to know when we’re going to start.”
“Start!” Adair MacKenzie, the soft mood having slipped away from him now, roared. “Haven’t I been waiting around here for an hour now for that old sluggard. And then he has the effrontery to send word to me that he’s waiting! The dolt! I’ll fix him. I’ll fix him, if it’s the last thing in the world I do! Thinks I’m a softy, does he? I’ll show him!” With this, Adair MacKenzie went fuming from the room.
Fifteen minutes later Nan Sherwood and her friends, Walker Jamieson, and Alice and her father were riding along the road toward Mexico City.
“Got this telegram just before we left,” Adair MacKenzie felt in his pockets for the yellow paper, “It’s from that Hammond girl.” He turned it over to Nan who read aloud to the others.
“Arrived safely at San Antonio. Plane there ready to take me on. Called home again. Mother holding her own. Love. Rhoda.”
Nan’s voice was husky as she finished. She folded the telegram slowly and thoughtfully, thinking of the struggle that was going on at Rose Ranch and remembering her own concern years back over her own mother’s health.
“There, Nan,” Bess laid a gentle hand on her friend’s. “Don’t look so worried. I’m sure things will turn out for the best.”