“I am afraid you are a bad, bad boy,” she said, with a touch of sympathy, as she put her hand on his arm, “but I hope Uncle Philip hasn’t been saying terrible things to you. You have been to see him, I know?”
“Yes, I have been to see him, and the interview wasn’t wholly pleasant. Perhaps I have been the bad boy you suggest, and he may be justified; I’m sure I don’t know. All I know is I tried to do what was right, and appear to have made a mix of it.”
“Come in and we will talk it over. Uncle Philip told me this morning that you may come and go all you want to, or even make your home here now. That is pleasant news, anyway, isn’t it?”
Her pleasant manner softened the recollection of that painful interview with Philip Davison. So Justin passed from an unpleasant interview to one so pleasant that it almost took the bitterness and the sting out of the first.
CHAPTER XII
CHANGING EVENTS
Among those who were first to welcome Justin on his return to Paradise Valley were Steve and Pearl Harkness. They came to Clayton’s with their little daughter, of whom they were proud. They made their call in the evening. Harkness was clad in new brown over-alls and jacket of the same material, and looked too big for them. Mrs. Harkness rustled in a dress of real China silk, whose shade of red made her round red face seem even hotter and redder than it was, Helen was fluffy in white skirts that stood out like those of a ballet dancer. Clayton in his dusty snuff-colored clothing, and Justin in his business suit of checked gray were insignificant figures compared with Pearl Harkness and her daughter.
“Now, Helen, what was it I told you to do?” said Pearl, lifting a plump round finger and shaking it at Helen, as soon as Harkness had finished his boisterous greetings.
Helen hesitated, and Pearl catching her up deposited her in Justin’s lap.
“Now, what was it I told you to do?”
Then Helen remembered. Putting her chubby arms about Justin’s neck and leaning hard on his breast, while she squeezed to the utmost of her strength, she said: