“Surely, they proved their equality,” observed Casey Rickard. Innes was angry with herself for smiling.
“What about their right?” She wanted to urge the right of the wage-earners, the taxpayers. Taxation without representation, but she heard her chance pass by. Gerty had danced on to another topic.
Things must be kept sprightly. Had Mr. Rickard met many of the valley people? And it was then that she threw her bomb toward the listening silent Hardins. She would like Mr. Rickard to meet some of their friends.
He said that he would be delighted, but that he was planning to leave shortly for the Heading.
“Of course.” She did not give her husband time to speak. She meant afterward! She was planning to give something, a bit novel, in his honor. She refused to see the glare from the angry man in his outgrown dinner coat. She did not glance toward the sister. What did Mr. Rickard think about a progressive ride?
“It sounds very entertaining, but what do you do?”
There was a loud guffaw from Tom. With deepened color, Gerty told her idea. A drive, changing partners, so he could meet all the guests. There was such a handsome girl in the valley, a Miss Morton. Visiting her brother, young Morton, of Philadelphia, the Mortons. His father a millionaire, himself a Harvard graduate, and he was running a melon ranch in the desert! There were the Youngbergs; Mr. Youngberg, the manager of the great A B C ranch, which belongs to Senator Graves, you know? Mrs. Youngberg, the senator’s own niece. And the Blinns, Mr. and Mrs. Blinn, not quite the same class of people, but so jolly and entertaining. Mr. Blinn makes you scream! And young Sutcliffe, the English zanjero, a remittance man, of course. Englished, the word wasn’t so pretty; it meant ditch-tender.
“And the Wilson girls. I was forgetting about them. They are with their brother, who owns one of the big ranches here. He is picking grapes, think of it, off vines not four years old.”
“Yes, it is a wonderful land,” agreed her guest.
“I think it will surprise you to find so many nice people in here; it certainly did me. One doesn’t expect to find congenial people in a new country like this. They say it is the quick rewards which attract ambitious men. Why, how much was it Jones cleared off his place last year, Tom? He was sending tomatoes east in February, grown in the open. This is really a huge forcing bed, isn’t it? I’ve heard it said, too, that there is an intellectual stimulus which attracts one class, and develops the other. Do you agree with that, Mr. Rickard?”