“You wouldn’t be able to get further than ‘five times’ before we reach the turn. There’ll be a glorious breeze then. There always is.”
“What do you mean by ‘five times’?”
“Why, just the multiplication table. I always say it when I’ve something I want to get over quick. You begin at one-times-one, and see if it isn’t so.”
“What shall we find at the top; your home?”
“Oh, no, indeed. That is quite the other way. Down in the valley. Sobrante ranch. That’s ours. Were you going there?”
“I was going–anywhere. I had lost my way. ‘Missed the trail,’ as you say in this country.”
“I thought, maybe, you were just a ‘tourist.’”
Mr. Hale laughed, and the laugh helped him to forget his present discomfort.
“Perhaps I am, even if you do speak so disdainfully. Are all ‘tourists’ objectionable?”
Jessica’s brown cheek flushed. She felt she had said something rude–she, whose ambition it was to be always and everywhere “Our Lady Jess,” that the dear “boys” called her. But she remembered how annoyed her mother was by the visits of strangers who seemed to regard Sobrante and its belongings as a “show” arranged for their special benefit.