Thanksgiving came and at the appointed hour Nan was waiting at the beach gate when she saw a gypsy riding toward her. Nan’s first thought was one of terror, for the approaching horseman looked as Anselo Spico had when arrayed in his best, a blue velvet corduroy suit, a scarlet silk sash and a wide felt hat edged with bright dangles.
“Oh, Robert Widdemere!” Nan cried, when she saw who it really was. “You looked so like Anselo Spico as you rode along by the sea, that I was about to run and hide. Where did you get that costume?”
“At a shop in town where one may procure whatever one wishes for a masquerade,” the laughing lad replied as he leaped to the ground and made a deep, swinging bow with his gay hat.
“I like it, Lady Red Bird,” he enthusiastically declared, “and I do believe that I will purchase this outfit. Won’t we create a stir in the countryside as we ride together down the Coast Highway.”
Nan laughed joyously. “It becomes you, Robert Widdemere,” she said. It was hard for the girl to believe that the handsome, flushed youth at her side was the same pale sickly lad whom she had first met less than a month before.
During that time these two had become well acquainted, taking short walks together and reading Ivanhoe while they rested. Miss Dahlia found that her pupil was making remarkable progress under her new tutor, moreover she liked the youth with his frank, good-looking face and she was glad to have Nan companied by someone near her own age.
Miss Dahlia appeared at the beach gate to see them off on their long planned ride and she called after them, “Robert, lad, be sure to come back and share our Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Thank you, Miss Dahlia, I would like to,” the youth replied doffing his hat. Then the little lady watched them ride away and turn up the mountain road.
In her heart there was a strange misgiving that she could not understand. “What if her sister, Miss Ursula, should suddenly return,” she thought. Then indeed would Miss Dahlia be censored for having permitted Nan to again assume the raiment of a heathen.
Never before had Nan seemed more charming to the lad than she did on that glorious morning when side by side they rode up a narrow canon road leading toward the mountains.