"It sure does," asserted her husband. "Wish you'd brought your father and mother with you. What in the world started them off to Scotland?"
Quickly the brothers explained.
"Well, well! So Uncle Darwent really had some money," commented Mrs. Wilder. "I'm real glad, though of course it isn't as though your father needed any more. I should have thought you boys would have wanted to go with them."
"Not when we could spend the summer on your ranch," returned Larry. "But we began to be afraid we would be obliged to go, and we should have if the telegram had been any later. No time ever seemed so long as when we were waiting for your answer."
"It was just luck we got your message," declared Horace. "Sometimes we don't go to town for a week. But something seemed to urge me to ride in the other morning, and when I arrived Con Brown hollered to me he had a telegram. When I read it, I didn't lose any time answering, and I made Con promise to rush it."
"Con's our telegraph operator," explained Bill. "Come on in and change your duds and then we'll look the ranch over."
Nothing loath to remove their clothes, which still smelled of engine smoke, despite their ride over the plains, as the brothers seized their suitcases and followed their young hosts, Larry exclaimed laughingly:
"You see we took your advice not to bring a trunk."
"Glad of it," asserted Horace joyously. "There's no need to dress out here. It's just great! You don't have to put on a collar from one week's end to another. But if you had brought a lot of clothes, mother would have made us dress too. That's why I mentioned the matter in my telegram."
This explanation was given in a low tone that Mrs. Wilder might not know her son had taken such effective measures to prevent his being obliged to "dress up," and the boys laughed heartily at the harmless joke.