“There's better ahead,” he went on. “I want to fix you up somewhere where you can have a bit of a home all to yourself. Let's see; Bonneville wouldn't do. There's always a lot of yaps about there that know us, and they would begin to cackle first off. How about San Francisco. We might go up next week and have a look around. I would find rooms you could take somewheres, and we would fix 'em up as lovely as how-do-you-do.”
“Oh, but why go away from Quien Sabe?” she protested. “And, then, so soon, too. Why must we have a wedding trip, now that you are so busy? Wouldn't it be better—oh, I tell you, we could go to Monterey after we were married, for a little week, where mamma's people live, and then come back here to the ranch house and settle right down where we are and let me keep house for you. I wouldn't even want a single servant.”
Annixter heard and his face grew troubled.
“Hum,” he said, “I see.”
He gathered up a handful of pebbles and began snapping them carefully into the creek. He fell thoughtful. Here was a phase of the affair he had not planned in the least. He had supposed all the time that Hilma took his meaning. His old suspicion that she was trying to get a hold on him stirred again for a moment. There was no good of such talk as that. Always these feemale girls seemed crazy to get married, bent on complicating the situation.
“Isn't that best?” said Hilma, glancing at him.
“I don't know,” he muttered gloomily.
“Well, then, let's not. Let's come right back to Quien Sabe without going to Monterey. Anything that you want I want.”
“I hadn't thought of it in just that way,” he observed.
“In what way, then?”