“If you persist in going into that boneyard country, Charmian, I am going with you. And that ends that.”
“Well, goodness knows you’re welcome, Mary Temple,” laughed Charmian. “But I didn’t for a minute imagine that you would care to go.”
“I don’t,” snapped Mary Temple. “But that’s not saying I’m not going. And there must be two more women in the party.”
“Oh, Mary Temple! What a prig you are! Do you want to pair us off?”
“Common decency demands that there be as many women as there are men,” declared Mary.
“We might take my wife along,” Smith Morley put in. “She’s in Los Angeles now. She could meet us at ——. Well, I’ll arrange that. But Leach hasn’t a wife—yet. Wouldn’t three women do, Miss Temple? Another person would make the two machines pretty full, you know. We’ll have a world of baggage to pile in the tonneaus and lash on the running-boards.”
“What is your wife like?” demanded Mary Temple unfeelingly.
“Why, Mary Temple! What an impertinent question!” cried Charmian.
“Impertinent or not,” barked Mary, “I want to know what his wife is like before I give my consent.”
Morley only laughed and showed no resentment. “Why, she’s a pretty good old girl,” he told her. “She’s a good housewife, not bad looking, a good dresser when I’m in luck, and pretty rough and ready when it comes to camp life in the wilderness. You’ll like her, I think.”