On that same day, in the morning hours, Mrs. Barbara Vernon, seated on the ranchman’s front porch, a deep peace upon her face, touched once more with the glow of health, looked out calmly upon a world made strangely beautiful through the magic given only to the eye of the convalescent. Never, even in the first blush of maidenhood, had she looked more beautiful. Sickness had etherealized her beauty. Upon her features was the resignation which, falling short of joy, gives contentment touched with melancholy.
“Oh, Mrs. Vernon!” cried two eager voices, their owners rushing through the front door in a race to reach her first. Agnes and Louis were flushed with unusual excitement. Something big had come into their lives.
“What is it, my dears? Good news?”
In answer to which, Louis, raising his voice to a shrill pipe, poured forth a volume of sound as intelligible as though his mouth were cluttered with pins.
“But what is it?” asked Barbara, breaking into a smile. “I can’t make out a word you say.”
“Let me talk, Louis,” said Agnes, making sure of the success of this request by clapping her hand over the excited youth’s mouth, and keeping it there. “Mrs. Vernon, there’s a matinee at the moving-picture house of San Luis Obispo this afternoon, and—and—” Here Agnes manifested her excitement by losing her breath, taking advantage of which, Louis, very much handicapped by the restraining hand still held over his mouth, made an effort to say, “Won’t you come?” giving the effect, however, of a bulldog’s growl.
“And,” continued Agnes, “it’s a swell show. And, oh, Mrs. Vernon, wouldn’t you like to come with us?”
“I don’t think,” Barbara made answer, “that I am in a mood just yet for anything like that. I am sure you can go by yourselves.”
The hand of Agnes dropped, as did her jaw. Louis dug his fists into his eyes. The girl’s lips quivered.
“But if you would like to have me,” amended the convalescent, reading sympathetically the signs of woe in the children, “why, of course—”