The girl choked, and the tears came to her eyes.
“You are all so lovely to me!” she said. Walking around the table to the colonel, she put her arms about his neck, and, standing on tiptoe, kissed his cheek. “How can I ever thank you?”
“You don’t have to, child. The spurs are nothing.”
“They are everything to me. They are a badge of honor that—that—I don’t deserve!”
“But you do deserve them. You wouldn’t have got them if you hadn’t. We might have given you something else—a vanity case or a book, perhaps; but no one gets spurs from the Penningtons who does not belong.”
After that she simply couldn’t tell them then that she was going away. She would wait until to-morrow; but she laid her plans without reference to the hand of fate.
That afternoon, immediately after luncheon, they were all seated in the patio, lazily discussing the chief topic of thought—the heat. It was one of those sultry days that are really unusual in southern California. The heat was absolutely oppressive, and even beneath the canvas canopy that shaded the patio there was little relief.
“I don’t know why we sit here,” said Custer. “It’s cooler in the house. This is the hottest place on the ranch a day like this!”
“Wouldn’t it be nice under one of those oaks up the cañon?” suggested Shannon.
He looked at her and smiled.