“She confided to me,” chuckled Dorothy, “that that is why she told him not to come around until afternoon. She will see him just before we start for Hardin’s.”
“He’ll be mad as fury.”
“Let him be. Auntie says she is determined to look over the estate, and see the water supply herself, and survey the proposed new channel, before she signs a paper.”
“Bully for her!” cried the slangy Tavia. “I bet that pirate, Philo Marsh, has something up his sleeve beside his arm.”
Bang! bang! bang! A knock at the girls’ door.
“Oh! is the house afire?” shrieked Tavia, leaping out of bed. “Or is it Papa Crater again, trying to find Molly and her bridegroom?”
“What are you girls waiting for?” demanded Nat, on the other side of the door. “Come on! Ned and I have been up for hours, and have hired a four-horse stage-coach—a regular old timer out of a show, I bet—to cart us and the baggage to Hardin’s.”
“Oh!” cried Dorothy. “You’re not starting at once?”
“Guess you’ll have time to dress and eat breakfast first—if you hurry,” chuckled Nat, as he went off down the hotel corridor.
This was only Nat’s fun. He and Ned were lonely and wanted to show the girls the town. Not that the sprawling western metropolis was much of a sight, after all!