“Will you drive Colonel Hathaway and Miss O’Gorman home with you?” crisply ordered Crocker of Danny. “We’ll continue the search for O’Hara.” He and Lonsdale leaped in the Chief’s car and were off.
Colonel Hathaway turned to Danny with a word of thanks. “You may have saved her life, my boy,” he said. At which, let it be recorded, Denny had the grace to blush.
But as for Mary Louise, she never did have one regret for that fib she told. In fact, as Danny helped her back into the automobile and his warm fingers closed upon her little hand in a sudden quick pressure of gratitude, the conscience of Mary Louise troubled her not at all. She had done the right thing. Both her heart and her mind told her so.
CHAPTER XVI
AUNT SALLY ENTERTAINS
As the returning search party came within sight of the Hathaway home, they saw that it was brilliantly lighted and the fat, comfortable shadow of Aunt Sally could be seen waddling back and forth in front of the kitchen window.
“Hurrah!” shouted Josie. “Aunt Sally sure is on the job and we won’t go hungry!”
They knew her surmise to be correct the minute they opened the door, for the smell of frying chicken and delicious coffee was wafted to their nostrils.
To Danny, who had eaten nothing all that day, and who had hastily consumed only a few hard, dry sandwiches the day before, the odor was like a breath of heaven. Hurrying back to his old tower room, he flung off the mud-stained livery with loathing, and gloried in a piping hot tub. Then he quickly slipped into a neat, well-tailored suit of quiet brown. It was the first time Mary Louise would see him really dressed and, boyishly, we wanted very much to have her satisfied.
When he entered the dining room a few minutes later, Mary Louise was also entering from the hall, and from the soft blush with which she greeted him one would surmise that Mary Louise was satisfied. As for herself, Mary Louise had never looked so lovely. Her soft, dark curls, still a bit damp from the rain, had been caught at the top of her head and held there by a narrow band of pink. It gave her quite the look of a little woman, or perhaps it was the startled, wistful and yet happy expression of her lovely eyes, under which lay violet shadows, that caused the old Colonel to realize with a start that Mary Louise had suddenly grown up. She had slipped on a quite grown-up garment, a soft and clinging tea gown of shell pink chiffon, and she entered the room a little wearily and very shyly.