“I don’t happen to have forgotten,” I interrupted, wondering why news which at one time would have set me on fire could now leave me quite cold. “But what caused the government to change its mind?”
“Allie!” he said, after a moment’s hesitation, fixing a slightly combative eye on mine.
“She seems to have almost unlimited powers,” I observed as coolly as I could, making an effort to get my scattered thoughts into line again.
“On the contrary,” Dinky-Dunk explained with quite painful politeness, “it was merely the accident that she happened to know the naval officer on the Imperial Board. She was at Banff the week the board was there, and she was able to put in a good word for the Vancouver Island site. And the Imperial verdict swung our own government officials over.”
“You were lucky to have such an attractive wirepuller,” I frigidly announced.
“The luck wasn’t altogether on my side,” Dinky-Dunk almost as frigidly retorted, “when you remember that it was giving her a chance to get rid of a ranch she was tired of!”
I did my best to hide my surprise, but it wasn’t altogether a success. The dimensions of the movement, apparently, were much greater than my poor little brain had been able to grasp.
“Do you mean it’s going to let you take Casa Grande off her ladyship’s hands?” I diffidently inquired.
“That’s already arranged for,” Dinky-Dunk quite casually informed me. We were a couple of play-actors, I felt, each deep in a rôle of his own, each stirred much deeper than he was ready to admit, and each a little afraid of the other.
“You are to be congratulated,” I told Dinky-Dunk, chilled in spite of myself, never for a moment quite able to forget the sinister shadow of Lady Alicia which lay across our trodden little path of everyday life.