She tapped her horse and darted ahead, throwing back a laughing retort: “Of course you would, for not having married a more attractive wife!”
Later in the day Mrs. Ned Castleton was busily engaged with Curtis Conrad and his brother Homer in the grove of cottonwoods across the road from the ranch house, showing them where to hang the last of the Japanese lanterns. Many people had already arrived and were scattered through the grove, or were wandering about the corral. Others were in the stockade behind the house, where Red Jack, Nosey Ike, and José Gonzalez were quartering the steer for the barbecue, and Hank Peters and Texas Bill were heaping wood on the fire where it was to be roasted. In the grove long tables had been made of planks and a floor laid for dancing. The lanterns hung in festoons around the platform and depended from the branches of the trees. Conrad saw Bancroft, Lucy, and Miss Dent driving up, and went to meet them.
Mrs. Ned Castleton beckoned to her husband. “I’m sure Lena is going to do something perfectly outrageous,” she said softly as they went to greet the arrivals, “something that will fairly knock us off our feet. She has looked so indifferent and so innocent all day and has been so sweet to me that I’m expecting a thunder clap every minute. I hope it won’t be anything disgraceful.”
It was one of Mrs. Ned’s important occupations, and she considered it her chief duty, for the sake, as she often told her husband, “of preserving at least a shred of the Castleton reputation,” to discover the daring whims of her sister-in-law and nip them in the bud before they were ready to blossom upon the world. Francisquita knew also that Mrs. Turner enjoyed saying and doing audacious things, quite as much because they shocked Mrs. Ned as because they gave her a piquant vogue in San Francisco society. “I wonder what it is going to be,” she repeated in a whisper to her husband as they came back with Conrad and the Bancroft party and went in search of Mrs. Turner. They found her sitting beside one of the tables, the centre of a group of men. Lucy, looking with interest, saw a large, golden-haired woman in a blue linen gown, that fitted perfectly her well corseted figure, and a blue picture hat, that matched the hue of her eyes. Her complexion of exquisite fairness and delicacy of coloring, and features of perfect regularity and proportion, made Lucy own to herself that she deserved her reputation as “the beautiful Mrs. Castleton.”
“What are we going to do all the rest of the day?” Mrs. Turner presently said, hiding a little yawn behind diamond-decked fingers. “It isn’t three o’clock yet, and it seems as if it ought to be the day after to-morrow. Let’s go in the house and play I’m a barber. Mr. Conrad, will you let me shave you?”
A thrill of shocked astonishment went through the group. Lucy dropped her eyes and felt her cheeks burn and Miss Dent turned uneasily away. Some of the men looked at one another and grinned; others caught their breath and avoided their neighbors’ eyes. Conrad masked a moment’s hesitation with a gay laugh.
“I would, with pleasure, Mrs. Castleton, if I had time; but just now I’m pretty busy. Here’s a lot of fellows with nothing to do, who’ll be delighted to help you amuse yourself.”
Mrs. Castleton glanced up at the men with a confiding smile. “I believe it’s really because he’s afraid; and he needn’t be, for I do it very well—don’t I, Ned?” Her brother-in-law gave gallant, if vague, confirmation, and she went on: “And he knows, for I shave him every time he comes to our house. But there’s too much wind out here, it would dry the lather too quickly; let’s go in the house.” She rose, and one of the men hastened to open her sunshade, another picked up her fan, a third her handkerchief, and the statuesque blue figure with its group of satellites left the grove.
“What does it mean, Fanny? Is this a new fad?” Ned Castleton asked his wife. “I never heard of it before, and she took my breath away when she told those people she always shaved me.”
“You backed her up splendidly, Ned; and I think you’d better go in now and let her shave you along with the others.”