“Why, my dear Virginia—the idea! You don't know in the least what you are talking about. I have been reading in the papers about these right-of-way troubles, and they are perfectly terrible. One report said they were arming the laboring men, and another said the militia might have to be called out.”
“Well, what of it?” said Virginia, with all the hardihood of youth and unknowledge. “It's something like a burning building: one doesn't want to be hard-hearted and rejoice over other people's misfortunes; but then, if it has to burn, one would like to be there to see.”
Miss Bessie put a stray lock of the flaxen hair up under its proper comb.
“I'm sure I prefer California and the orange-groves and peace,” she asserted. “Don't you, Cousin Billy?”
What Mr. Calvert would have replied is no matter for this history, since at this precise moment the Rajah came in, “coruscating,” as Virginia put it, from his late encounter with the superintendent's chief clerk.
“Give them the word to go, Jastrow, and let's get out of heah,” he commanded. And when the secretary had vanished the Rajah made his explanations to all and sundry. “I've been obliged in a manneh to change ouh itinerary. Anotheh company is trying to fault us up in Qua'tz Creek Canyon, and I am in a meashuh compelled to be on the ground. We shall be delayed only a few days, I hope; at the worst only until the first snow-storm comes; and, in the meantime, Califo'nia won't run away.”
Virginia clapped her hands.
“Then we are really to go to 'the front' and see a right-of-way fight? Oh, won't that be perfectly intoxicating!”
The Rajah glared at her as if she had said something incendiary. The picturesque aspect of the struggle had evidently not appealed to him. But he smiled grimly when he said: “Now there spoke the blood of the fighting Carterets: hope you won't change your mind, my deah.” And with that he dived into his working den, pushing the lately-returned secretary in ahead of him.
Virginia linked arms with Bessie, the flaxen-haired, when the wheels began to turn.