He put the letter in his pocket.
“You can trust me.”
“You had better go, because I hear the rattle that can be made only by Kurt’s car. He must have come back for something. You can go around the bend here.”
“Say, Penny Ante, I don’t like this deceiving him—”
“Just a bit longer, Jo,” she said persuasively. “Mrs. Kingdon said to wait until her return.”
He followed her instructions, and she returned to the house.
“It’s a great possession,” she thought musingly, “the big love of a true and simple heart like his. It would probably be idyllic to live a life of love up here in these hills with the man of one’s choice, I suppose, but a happiness too tame for me. To be sure, there would be the excitement of trying to ruffle the love-feathers, but that, too, in time would pall. I wonder how much longer I shall stay hidden up here before my past finds me out. Any minute something is sure to drop and I will be called back—back to my other life that is less enticing now I have had a taste of domesticity.
“But,” she reflected, “domesticity doesn’t satisfy long. This semi-security is getting on my nerves. Hebby isn’t so good a trailer as I feared he would be, or he’d have tracked me up here.”
Her meditations were diverted by a tattoo upon her door which she had locked so that the ever-present, ever-prying Betty and the all-wise Francis could not intrude.
“Aunt Penny, let us in!” came in aggrieved chorus.