On the front porch little Junius Brutus Ponk was strutting back and forth, chatting with Laura.
"Good evening, Miss Swaim. I just soared down to invite you to take a little drive in my gadabout. I hope it will suit you to go."
"Nothing would please me more," Jerry said, lightly. "Let me get my wrap." As she returned to her room her eye fell on her hand-bag, lying on her desk. A sense of grief swept over her, for one moment, followed by a strange lightness of heart as if her latest problem had solved itself suddenly.
As they passed down the walk to the little gray car York Macpherson looked after them, conscious of the impossible thing in Ponk's mind, and wondering wherein lay the charm of this pink-and-white inefficient girl to grip with so strong a hold on the heart of a sensible man like Ponk.
"It is her power to be what she has never been, but what she will become," he said to himself. "She's the biggest contradiction to all rules that I ever knew, but she's a dead-sure proposition."
The coming of callers found York in his best mood, and when his sister bade him good night he put his arms around her, saying, gently:
"You are the best woman in the world, Laura, and you mustn't carry a single hidden worry."
"Neither must you, York," Laura replied, and each knew that the other understood.
Meantime, out on the upper Sage Brush road Jerry was letting the beauty of the evening lift the weight from her mind. She was just beginning to understand that, while she had imagined herself to be doing her own thinking heretofore, she had been merely willing that her thinking should be done for her. She was now at the place where her will meant little and her judgment everything in shaping her acts. The recognition brought a sense of freedom she had never known before. What she had overheard from the porch seemed far away, and her wounded spirit grew whole again as she began to find herself standing on her own feet, not commanding that somebody else should hold her up. Jerry's mind worked rapidly, and before the gray car had been turned at the northern end of the evening's ride it was not the Jerry Swaim of an hour ago, but a young warrior, clad in armor, with shining weapons in her hand, who sat beside the adoring little hotel-keeper of the faulty grammar and the kindly heart.
Ponk halted the car at the far end of the drive up-stream, to take in a moonlight view of the Sage Brush Valley.