“Miss Diantha lives on the next ranch to ours out home,” Jean said finally, and there was a curious note of rebellious contradiction in her voice, as if she were offering apologies against her will for Diantha Calvert. “She is my mother’s dearest friend, and we all love her more than I can say.”
“But why doesn’t she ever come back home to Queen’s Landing?” asked Polly wonderingly. “Grandfather has told us what a dear girl she was years ago, and how she was one of the belles here and up at Washington in those days. But that must be thirty years ago.”
“It surely was, and do you realize how old that makes her now? She is fifty her next birthday, I know, and she lives at the Alameda Ranch, about seven miles from us.”
“She does!” Polly’s brown eyes opened wide in amazement. “What’s her name, Miss Murray? What will the girls say?”
“Her name is Mrs. Alexander MacDowell, but we call her Mrs. Sandy,” and as Jean said it, even a casual observer could have told from the little tender smile on her lips, and the light in her eyes, what one member, at least, of the Murray outfit thought of Mrs. Sandy.
Polly pushed back her hair from her forehead quickly, as she always did when she was a little bit excited or surprised, and sat down on the window seat.
“Oh, dear, I came expressly to talk about Crullers, Miss Murray, and now I’ve found out about Miss Diantha. And it’s so interesting, I don’t know which to talk of first—and it’s getting late, and Aunty Welcome said I must hurry home.”
Jean laughed.
“Well, you are in a tangle, aren’t you?” she said. “I can tell you of Jane Daphne in a minute, but it would take days and days to make you understand our Mrs. Sandy. That is what we all call her out home.”
“Where is your home, please, Miss Murray? I don’t believe I ever heard you say.”