Mr. Moore had heard nothing of the robbery or the raid. Mrs. Farley had not wished to cause him a moment’s anxiety about the safety of his idolized daughter. She had told him that the girls were spending the night with Mrs. Goode in Tombstone, and, since the wife of the Deputy Sheriff had been a close friend of Mary’s mother, he had thought little of it. Even now that it was all over, they decided to merely introduce Harry as a friend of Patsy and Polly, who had come West to be attached to the border patrol.
Mr. Moore welcomed the boy gladly, and, for half an hour, they talked together of the East and the West. Mary and Dora slipped away and returned with lemonade and a plate of Carmelita’s cookie-snaps.
Then the two girls walked down to the cross road with Harry and waited until he climbed aboard the funny old ’bus and rode away.
He bent low over Mary at the last moment. Dora had not heard his whispered words, but she knew by the sudden flush that they had been complimentary.
Arm in arm they turned and walked back up the gently ascending hill-road toward their home.
“How do you like the newcomer?” Dora tried to make her voice sound indifferent.
Mary laughingly confessed, “I’d really like him lots better if he didn’t flatter me so much.”
Dora replied, “I know how you feel. I’d heaps rather have a boy be just a good pal. It makes a person feel, oh, as if she were the sort of a girl a boy thought he had to make love to, or she wouldn’t be having a good time. I’ve known steens of them, fine fellows really, who came over from Wales Military to our dances. They thought the only way they could put it over big was to flatter their partners. You know that as well as I do. Why, we Quadralettes have compared notes time and again and found the same boy had said the same complimentary thing to all four of us.” Mary made no reply, so Dora continued, “Dick and Jerry are the sort of boy friends I like. They treat us as if we could be talked to about something besides ourselves. I tell you, the girl who can win the love of Jerry Newcomb is going to win one of the finest men who walks on this green earth.”
Dora’s tone was so earnest that Mary laughed. “Goodness!” she teased. “Why all this eloquence? There isn’t any green earth around here for Jerry to walk on. It’s all sand.”
Suddenly Dora changed the subject. “Why do you suppose Little Bodil is called Sister Theresa?” she asked.