"Well, but JOHN!" Martie was still dazed and exulting. "It's so GOOD to see you!"
"I had to see you," he said, in his simple way, his eyes never leaving her.
"But now, let me plan!" she said, with an excited laugh. "If you'll let me get in the car with you, and—and let me see, we'd better get something extra for company—"
"Now, that's just what you shan't do," Dean Silver said decisively. "I don't propose to have you—"
"Oh, she likes it," John assured him, with his dreamy air that was yet so positive. "Don't waste time, Dean."
Martie laughed; John sat between herself and the novelist in the wide seat. He turned his head so that she was always under the fire of his adoring eyes. And in the old way he laughed, thrilled, exulted in everything she said.
Half an hour later, as gaily as if she had known them both all her life, she introduced them to Pa. Pa, whose youngest daughter was just now in high favour, was mildly pleased with the invasion. This impromptu hospitality smacked of prosperity, of worldliness. He went stiffly into the study with John, to bore the poet with an old volume about California: "From the Padres to the Pioneers."
Martie, cheerfully setting the dining table, kept a brisk conversation moving with Dean Silver, who sat smoking on the side porch.
Presently she came put with an empty glass bowl, which she set down beside him. He followed her down into the tipsy brick paths, under the willows, while she gathered velvet wallflowers to fill it.
"You're very clever at this village sort of thing," the writer said. "And I must say I like it myself. Old-fashioned street full of kids streaming in for ice-cream, garden with stocks and what-you-call-'ems all blooming together—you know, I had a sort of notion you weren't half as nice as you are!"