“And it is good,” Dick assured him. “As representing the ranch in its fairest aspects, they are to administer the kiss of welcome. Make your choice, Aaron.”
Aaron, with a quick whirl to catch some possible lurking disaster at his back, demanded, “They are all three to kiss me?”
“No, make your choice which is to give you the kiss.”
“The two I do not choose will not feel that I have discriminated against them?” Aaron insisted.
“Whiskers no objection?” was his next query.
“Not in the way at all,” Lute told him. “I have always wondered what it would be like to kiss black whiskers.”
“Here’s where all the philosophers get kissed tonight, so hurry up,” Ernestine said. “The others are waiting. I, too, have yet to be kissed by an alfalfa field.”
“Whom do you choose?” Dick urged.
“As if, after that, there were any choice about it,” Hancock returned jauntily. “I kiss my lady—the Little Lady.”
As he put up his lips, Paula bent her head forward, and, nicely directed, from the indented crown of her hat canted a glassful of water into his face.