“Won’t leave anything out,” Adair MacKenzie looked at his watch as he spoke, “but we’ve got to do everything up in a hurry. Haven’t got much time to stay in this city. Got a telegram this morning from the caretaker at the Hacienda. Expects us there within the next couple of days.”
“Oh, daddy,” Alice laughed. “That’s the way you always are. Always wanting to move on just as soon as we arrive at a place.”
“And you,” he twitted, “mañana is always good enough for you. You’re just a lazy beggar. Now, what do you want to do today.”
“Oh, everything, just everything,” Alice looked as though she would like to do it all and do it now. She had that happy faculty that some people have of always having a good time no matter what happens.
Nan had it too. The word “bore” which slips so easily from the tongues of many young people who really shouldn’t know what boredom is, had never crossed her lips. Life seemed too full of adventure, too full of a number of things to do for her to even think of applying it to herself. Linda Riggs might have used the word, but never Nan, and never Alice.
“Well, there’s your answer,” Adair MacKenzie turned to Walker when Alice answered that she wanted to do “just everything.” “It’s a typical woman’s answer. Now, do what you want to with it.”
“O-kay.” Walker Jamieson assumed the responsibility willingly enough. “Now, listen here,” he turned to the girls and assumed a serious air and a stern one that unfortunately didn’t impress them at all, and said, “we’ve got just about four hours in this day to do with as you want to do.”
“Four hours!” Nan exclaimed, “why, how short the days are here! It’s only nine o’clock now, or is Amelia’s watch slow?” She had been looking at Amelia’s wrist as she spoke.
“I said four hours.” Walker repeated, still sternly.
“He said four hours.” Adair MacKenzie was equally stern.