When the girl spoke, she said: “Harry, your mother wants you to marry one of your own people.”
It was then that they heard a soft voice calling to them, “Come to me, both of you.”
They entered the dimly lighted room and stood by the bedside. The little woman smiled up at them and in her eyes there was a new tenderness. Holding out a frail hand, she said: “I have always wanted a little girl, Winona. Won’t you be my beloved daughter?”
The young people knelt and she placed their hands together. “Now,” she said, “my dearest wish has been fulfilled. My older son is to have just the wife that I would choose for him.”
CHAPTER XV
A MYSTERY AT LAST
A week after the arrival of Peyton’s letter, suggesting that his sister remain longer, another came with quite a different request. In it the lad assured them all of his great faith in his new overseer.
“Trujillo seems to have complete control of his helpers. In fact, at times, I think that they treat him reverentially, which, of course I cannot understand, but I am now confident that there will be no uprising among the peons and so Babsie I do hope that Virginia and your other girl friends will come to Three Cross and make you as long a visit as you have made them, longer indeed, if they can be spared.”
“Oh, Virg, will you go, you and Betsy and Megsy? I’d so love to have you all with me when I open up that old house. You know Peyton has been living in one of the small adobes, not wishing to open up the big place until I came. Virg, you’ve been there time and again. I remember how Mrs. Dartley called you her ‘Angel of Mercy.’”
“As everyone else does on the desert or anywhere,” Margaret put in.
Virg laughed. “And all because I rode over to Three Cross one day and applied first aid measures when the Dartley baby was cutting teeth.”