“There is just this minute,” she answered. “Dinner with waiters and soup and mayonnaise and strawberry ice cream.”
They exchanged happy smiles over Nancy’s inconsequential menu.
After a month’s Gypsying, it was good to be civilized for a few days before the thirst for wandering came over them again, and they must push on toward California.
Daniel Moore was not at the appointed meeting-place, in one of the small sitting rooms. They waited impatiently for him for a quarter of an hour, and finally left word at the desk that he would find them in the dining room. There, in the interest of dinner and of the occupants of other tables, their recent fellow traveler completely passed from their minds.
“It takes a thousand miles of privation to appreciate real comfort,” observed Miss Helen Campbell, delicately nibbling the breast of a spring chicken. “My dear children, how very pleasant this is, to be sure.”
The Motor Maids fully agreed with her. The lights and the flowers, the music and the well-trained waiters, as well as the delicious dinner, afforded them supreme enjoyment for the moment. They tried to remember that less than seventy years had passed since the first ox-drawn emigrant wagon had entered the valley.
“And since that time all this has happened,” cried Mary dramatically. For it was she, more than the others, who loved the history of the places through which they passed. “They say Brigham Young saw it all in a dream,” she continued, “and the moment he set eyes on the valley and the lake, he said: ‘This is the place. Drive on.’”
“‘And forty years later Brigham Young laid the corner-stone for the Temple,’” read Billie from the guide book in a sing-song voice. “‘The architecture is composite——’ What’s that?”
She raised her eyes questioningly. “Why, you haven’t heard a word I——” she began.
Four pairs of eyes were turned toward the entrance of the dining room, where stood a tall, slender, young girl, in a white dress. Her red-gold hair was coiled low on her neck. Her arms hung limply at her sides, and she gazed with a listless air into space, without seeing any of the diners at the tables. Her father, the imperturbable John James Stone, was on one side of her, and on the other an equally imperturbable young man, with a stern, rather hard countenance, a square jaw and a mouth as inscrutable and enigmatic as the shut door of a tomb.