The girls were about to leave the kitchen when Jerry called to Dick and away he went into the gathering darkness.
“The boys sleep in the bunk house out by the corral,” Mrs. Newcomb explained. “They’ll be back, I reckon, soon as you’re ready.”
The spare room was large, square, with a small fireplace in it. The bed was an old-fashioned four-poster and looked luxuriously comfortable.
A table, a dresser, two chairs of dark wood and a bright rag rug completed the furnishings.
“How quiet it is,” Mary said. “There isn’t a neighbor nearer than those Dooleys and Jerry said they are way over in the canyon.”
Dora, wondering if Mary could be contented if she became Jerry’s wife, some day in the future, asked, “Would you like to live on a ranch, do you think?”
Innocently, Mary replied as she lighted the kerosene lamp on the bureau, “Why, yes, I’m sure I would, if Dad could be with me.”
Dora sighed as she thought, “Poor Jerry. She’s still blind and I did think today that her eyes were opened.”
CHAPTER XV
IN THE BARN LOFT
“Jerry, what did you do with the box?” Mary managed to whisper as the cowboy drew out a chair for her at the supper table.