Harold was frankly curious. He had not heard of the guest at the Warner’s. Indeed, having arrived but that day he had heard nothing except his mother’s anxiety about Gwynette. Could it be possible that the fine-looking chap at his side was a friend of Jenny’s? He could easily understand that anyone, man or woman, who had once met her would, ever after, wish to be counted as one of her friends.
When they were well out in the country, the lad at the wheel turned and smiled in his frank, friendly way. “Stranger hereabouts?” he inquired.
“Yes and no,” the young man replied. “This is my third visit, though the other two could hardly be called that. I came here when the rainy season began up north to put my sister, who is not strong, in the seminary here. I hoped that your more even climate might help restore her strength. Dakota is our home state. We have a ranch there, but the winters are very severe. Sister, I am sorry to say, was not happy at the seminary, and, when she did take a severe cold, she did not recover, and so I made my second flying trip with the intention of taking her to Arizona if that seemed best, but, when I arrived her nurse told me that she believed a pleasant home atmosphere would do more for my sister than a dry air. This, I was glad to find, had already been offered to Lenora. She had met a girl, Jenny Warner is her name, and the two had become fast friends. On the very day that I arrived Miss Jenny was also going to the seminary with an invitation from her grandmother which was to make my sister a guest in their home until she should be strong enough to travel. That was two weeks ago. This, my third visit, is for the purpose of determining if Lenora is well enough to accompany me to our home in Dakota. My name is Charles Gale, and I have just completed the agricultural course connected with the state college at Berkeley.”
Harold reached out a strong brown hand which was grasped heartily by another equally strong and brown.
“Great! I’d like well to take that course. Harold Jones is my name. Mother and Sis put a Poindexter and a hyphen in the middle. Women like that sort of thing. It was mother’s maiden name. Well, here we are at the long lane that leads up to the farm.”
Charles leaned over to pick up his suitcase. “Don’t turn in. I can hike up to the house.”
“Nothing doing.” Harold swung into the narrow dirt lane. “I was planning to pay a visit to Susan Warner. She took care of me when I was a small kid, you see, and so I claim her as sort of a foster grandmother, and, as for Silas Warner, there’s no finer example of the old school farmer living, or I miss my bet.”
Charles looked interested. “I’d like to meet him. I was here such a short time on my last visit that, although I met Mrs. Warner, I did not see her good spouse.”
Harold, eager to create some sort of a stir, caused his sport siren to announce their arrival with shrill staccato notes. It had the desired effect. First of all dear old Susan Warner bustled out of the kitchen door, then from around the front corner of the house came Jenny with her friend, frail and white, leaning on her arm. Lenora’s face brightened when she saw her brother and she held out both arms to him as he leaped from the low car. Harold chivalrously sprang up on the side porch to shake hands first of all with his one time nurse, then he went to Jenny, and although he did not really frame his thought in words, he was conscious of feeling glad that it was his arrival and not that of Charles Gale which was causing her liquid brown eyes to glow with a welcome which, at least, was most friendly.
“Come in, all of you, do, and have a glass of milk and a cookie.” Grandma Sue thought of them as just big children, and, by the eagerness with which they accepted the invitation, she was evidently not far wrong.