“Shall I help you too, or shall Rosie and I look after the refreshments?” Virginia asked as she greeted Leigh.
“No, run along and get dressed. Rosie knows just 215 how to fix things in the kitchen, and I never need anybody else if Leigh can help me,” Thaine declared. “How is this, Leigh?”
Leigh gave a quick glance and answered: “Too heavy everywhere? Can we fix it right?” “You bet we can. I’m not going to have a thing wrong tonight,” Thaine answered her. “But Jo fixed it, and you know Jo.”
Leigh made no reply, but went about the rearrangement with swift artistic skill; while Jo, who had changed her mind about being in a hurry, slipped down stairs to the dining room again. At the doorway she discovered the undoing of her work. For a minute or two she watched the pair, then passed unnoticed up stairs again. Leigh Shirley was the only girl who ever dared to oppose Jo, and she did it so quietly and completely that Jo could only ignore her. She could not retaliate.
“Jo Bennington, you are the prettiest girl in Kansas, and I claim the first dance and the last, and some in-betweens, right now,” Thaine declared when she appeared again.
Jo was tall and graceful and imperious in her manner. The oldest and handsomest child in a large family, she had had her own way at home and with her associates all her life. Her world was made to give way to her from the beginning, until nothing seemed possible or popular without her sanction. Tonight her heavy black hair was coiled in braids about her head, her black eyes were full of youthful glow and her cheeks were like June roses. She wore a pink lawn dress vastly becoming to her style, and a string of old-fashioned pearl beads was wound through her dark braids. 216
“You’d better make amends for spoiling all my pretty work as you and Leigh have done,” she said in reply to Thaine’s frank compliment. “I’ll make it a few more dances, for you do dance better than any of the other boys—”
“Except Todd Stewart, Junior,” the owner of the name, who had just come in, declared. “There is to be a birthday party and an old settlers’ meeting, and maybe a French duel or two before midnight. I remember when I was the only kid in the Grass River Valley. There were others at first, but I always thought the grasshoppers or Darley Champers ate ’em. And Jo is the first white girl baby born in captivity here. We’ll lead the opening of this ball or shoot up the ranch. You can have Jo for the last dance, Thaine, my son, but me first.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” Jo declared as Thaine was about to protest. “Serves you right for spoiling my decorations. But, Thaine, I claim you for the in-betweens and the last. Let’s take one more look at the refreshments—that Gimpke girl may have them all in a mess by this time.”
There was a rush for the kitchen, where Leigh Shirley was already showing Rosie how to keep the table of dishes in order.