Jane hesitated. She should have replied that she was leaving on Tuesday, but now she was not sure that she wished to go.
For a merry half hour these two chattered. The lad seemed to be quite willing to talk of everything but his home, and Jane was too well bred to ask questions. Jean told of his college life, and when she asked if he regretted that his days of study were over, he laughingly declared that they never would be. “Mr. Packard is a great student,” he looked up brightly to say, “and our long winter evenings, that some chaps might call dull, are the most interesting I have ever spent. We take one subject after another and go into it thoroughly. We’re most interested in experimental inventions and we have rigged up all sorts of labor saving contrivances over on the ranch.” Recalling something which for the moment had been forgotten, Jean exclaimed: “Mr. Packard wished me to invite you all to visit us as soon as you are quite settled here.”
Then with that unconscious admiration in his eyes, he concluded: “For myself I most eagerly second the invitation.” Jane’s vanity was indeed gratified. She laughed a happy musical laugh which sounded natural, although it had really been cultivated. “I am greatly flattered that you should be so anxious to entertain the Abbotts,” she told him, “since I am the only one of us whom you have met.”
“True!” he confessed, merrily, “but you know we scientists can visualize an entire family from one specimen. How could the other three be undesirable when one is so lovely? Maybe it’s because I am a blonde that I admire the olive type of beauty.”
Just why she said it Jane could not have told, unless the memory of what that awful Gabby at the station had said still rankled. Be that as it may, almost without her conscious direction she heard herself saying: “I suppose, then, that you must be a great admirer of Meg Heger?” There was a note in the girl’s voice which made the lad look up a bit puzzled. What he said in reply was both pleasing and displeasing to his companion. With a ring of sincerity he assured his listener that there were few girls finer than Meg Heger.
“I do not know her personally very well,” he told Jane. “She seems to shun the acquaintance of all young people. I sometimes think that she may believe her friendship would not be desired since she is supposed to be the daughter of that old Ute Indian, but this is not true. We in the West ask not the parentage but the sincerity of our friends. It’s through her foster-father that I know the girl, really. I often go with him to the timber line and above it, when I am not needed on the ranch. It’s a beautiful thing to hear him tell how Meg has enriched their lives.”
Then, as his direct gaze was again lifted to the olive-tinted face of the girl near him, he said frankly: “Many of the cowboys and others of our neighbors rave about Meg’s beauty. But I do not admire the Spanish or French type as much as I do our very own American girl.”
Jean did not say in words which American girl he thought wonderfully lovely to look upon, but his eyes were eloquent.
Jane could have sat there basking in the lad’s evident admiration for hours, but the position of the sun, high above them, suggested to her that something must be amiss. “I wonder why Dan and the children do not return,” she said, rising to look up the brook trail. Jean leaped to his feet and together they went around the cabin and scanned the mountain-side and the lad yodeled, but there was no response.
“Of course, nothing could have happened to them all,” Jane assured him. “They have gone farther than they planned, I suppose.” Then, turning with a helpless little laugh, she said in her most winning way (and Jane could be quite irresistible when she wished), “I have a terrible confession to make. You will have to starve if they do not return, for I have never learned to cook.”