“You are right, Ann, and you need not warn me. I’ll not say a word outside of the family. And yet, Ann, Mrs. Tyson can’t say and do the things she does and have it all kept a secret!”
“I suppose not,” thoughtfully said Ann.
“We all liked that boy of hers, though, who stopped here on his way to your place in the mountains. My, but he is a handsome chap, and with such pleasant ways! Suzanne, too, is a pretty girl and pleasant for the way she’s been spoiled.”
Ann supposed that the spoiling of Suzanne had also been revealed by Nancy, from whom Rita had had so much information about the LeRoy establishment in the East.
It was characteristic of Mrs. Sterling’s reserve that she had not told Ann what took place when her sister first made her appearance at the ranch. “What did you say to her, Daddy?” Ann had asked her father, but her father passed the matter over lightly. “Very politely, Ann,” he replied, “I said to her frankly what your mother could not say, in regard to the openness of future relations and our regret that things had been misrepresented in the past, with the hope that such methods would not be used again. Then I made her welcome at the ranch and got out as quickly as I could!”
Time was all too short for all that had to be done before Ann started in on her sophomore year at school. Mrs. Sterling was tired with the strain which she had been under while her sister was there. “Never mind, Ann,” she said. “Leave all the traps that need mending behind. Perhaps we’ll have more time another summer. Your frocks are in pretty good condition and we shall have time to buy what is necessary in the East before school begins.”
“Am I going with you to Grandmother’s before school begins?” Ann joyously asked.
“Indeed you are. I would not appear there without you for anything,” her mother replied with a whimsical smile. “I need your courage to sustain me, little daughter, since your father is not going East with us. Just think, Ann, how many years it has been!” Mrs. Sterling looked away toward the distant mountains with a sad expression.
“See here, Mother, you are to be happy, not sad, to think about going back. Suppose Aunt Sue is there to spoil it a little. She hasn’t a bit more right there than you. I’m afraid that you have what Katherine says her father calls an ‘inferiority complex,’ when you think of your older sister. Don’t let her browbeat you, little mudder! She thinks that she is always right, or pretends to think it, and wants to run the universe. I believe that you do need your little old Ann to keep up your spirits!”