“I’m sure she doesn’t,” agreed Shannon; “but people who are late to meals are a nuisance, and I promise that I shan’t be again. I fell asleep.”
“You may change your mind about being late to meals when you learn the hour we breakfast,” laughed Custer.
“No—I shall be on time.”
“You shall stay in bed just as late as you please,” said Mrs. Pennington. “You mustn’t think of getting up when we do. You need all the rest you can get.”
They seemed to take it for granted that Shannon was going to stay with them, instead of going to the little bungalow that had been her mother’s—the truest type of hospitality, because, requiring no oral acceptance, it suggested no obligation.
“But I cannot impose on you so much,” she said. “After dinner I must go down to—to——”
Mrs. Pennington did not permit her to finish.
“No, dear,” she said, quietly but definitely. “You are to stay here with us until you return to the city. Colonel Pennington has arranged with the nurse to remain with your mother’s housekeeper until after the funeral. Please let us have our way. It will be so much easier for you, and it will let us feel that we have been able to do something for you.”
Shannon could not have refused if she had wished to, but she did not wish to. In the quiet ranch house, surrounded by these strong, kindly people, she found a restfulness and a feeling of security that she had not believed she was ever to experience again. She had these thoughts when, under the influence of morphine, her nerves were quieted and her brain clear. After the effects had worn off, she became restless and irritable. She thought of Crumb then, and of the bungalow on the Vista del Paso, with its purple monkeys stenciled over the patio gate. She wanted to be back where she could be free to do as she pleased—free to sink again into the most degrading and abject slavery that human vice has ever devised.
On the first night, after she had gone to her rooms, the Penningtons, gathered in the little family living room, discussed her, as people are wont to discuss a stranger beneath their roof.