"Yes, yes, I understand," Mrs. Gallant said. "You run along now and let me finish what I have to do."
In the living room he picked up the volume of "David Copperfield" he had been reading through for the first time since his father's death. Musing as he turned the pages he thought how thankful he was to his father for having made reading interesting to him. He remembered that the books his father had read to him and had given him to read, books that crammed the small bookcase near the fireplace and filled every shelf and table in the room, were the very best—Dickens, Thackeray, Washington Irving, Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Addison, and of the later writers, Kipling, O. Henry, Anatole France, Mark Twain, Barrie.
"If I ever have a boy I will teach him to read as my father taught me," he said to himself.
Consuello arrived a few minutes before three. He saw through the window the machine in which they had ridden to her father's ranch the previous Sunday draw up to the curb outside. He watched her descend from the tonneau, speak to the chauffeur, who touched his cap, and turn toward the walk leading to the house. She wore the same dainty white dress she wore each time he had seen her and a white, summery, wide-brimmed hat.
He went out to meet her.
"You see," she said, "I'm not one of those who believe in being fashionably late. What a pretty little place you have."
His mother met them at the door. She had doffed her kitchen apron and her face was slightly flushed—from the heat of the range, he knew—as she smiled at Consuello with an extended hand.
"Miss Carrillo, my mother," John said.
"I'm happy to meet you, Miss Carrillo," Mrs. Gallant said. "John has spoken so often to me of you that I really feel I know you."
"I have been so anxious to meet you—to know you," Consuello said. "I, too, feel I know you because he has told me so much about you. I only wish I had been thoughtful enough to have had you with us last Sunday. The next time you must be with us."