When they moved to San Rafael he brought them back, a load that must have filled the butcher's wagon to its hood. His young ladies' gratitude pleased him, but to their offers of a reward he would not listen.
"Old Chinaman take care of my boss's house like my boss want me. Bad time, good time, ally samey. You no make earthquake—he come—my job help like evly day. I no good Chinaman if I don't. I no get paid extla for do my job."
The girls, after fruitless efforts, had to give in. Afterward, in their rooms when they sorted the clothes—the two beds were covered with them—they cried and laughed over the useless finery. Fong had carried away only the richest and costliest—evening dresses, lace petticoats, opera wraps, furs, high-heeled slippers, nothing that could be worn as life was now.
"We'll have to go about in ball dresses for the rest of the summer," said Chrystie, giggling hysterically. "How nice you'll look weeding the garden in an ermine stole and white satin slippers."
"We've got to wear them somewhere," Lorry decided.
"For one reason we've almost nothing else, and for another—and the real one—Fong mustn't know he's rescued the wrong things. I will weed the garden in white satin slippers, and I'll put on a ball dress for dinner every night."
Chrystie was well again now. Drowsing on the balcony in the steamer chair and taking sun baths in the garden had restored her, if not quite to her old rosy robustness, to a pale imitation of her once glowing self. The rest of her hair had been cut off, and her shaven poll was hidden by a lace cap with a fringe of false curls sewed to its edge. This was very becoming and in sweeping draperies—some of the evening dresses made over into tea gowns—she was an attractive figure, her charms enhanced by a softening delicacy.
The dark episode of her disappearance was allowed to rest in silence. She and Lorry had threshed it out as far as Lorry thought fit. That Boyé Mayer had dropped out of sight was all Chrystie knew. Some day later she would hear the truth, which Lorry had learned from Pancha Lopez. Lorry had also decided that the world must never know just what did happen to the second Miss Alston. The advertisement in the Despatch was withdrawn in time, and those who shared the knowledge were sworn to secrecy. Her efforts to invent a plausible explanation caused Chrystie intense amusement. She hid it at first, was properly attentive and helpful, but to see Lorry trying to tell lies, worrying and struggling over it, was too much. A day came when she forgot both manners and sympathy, began to titter and then was lost. Lorry was vexed at first, looked cross, but when the sinner gasped out, "Oh, Lorry, I never thought I'd see you come to this," couldn't help laughing herself.
On a bright Saturday afternoon Chrystie and Sadie were sitting on the front balcony in the shade of the Maréchal Niel rose. Mrs. Burrage and Lorry had gone for a drive, later to meet Mark—who was to stay with them over Sunday—at the station. Upstairs Aunt Ellen and Mrs. Kirkham were closeted with a dressmaker, fashioning festal attire. For that night there was to be a dinner, the first since the move. Beside the household Mark was coming, and Crowder was expected on a later train with Pancha Lopez and her father—eight people, quite an affair. Fong had been marketing half the morning, and was now in the kitchen in a state of temperamental irritation, having even swept Lorry from his presence with a commanding, "Go away, Miss Lolly. I get clazy if you wolly me now."
Sadie and Chrystie had become very friendly. Sadie was not disinclined to adore the youngest Miss Alston, so easy to get on with, so full of fun and chatter. Chrystie had fulfilled her expectations of what an heiress should be, handsome as a picture, clothed in silken splendors, regally accepting her plenty, carelessly spendthrift.