“Ma will be tickled to see you,” Lance repeated as he drove off in the rattly car. “Come over as soon as you can.”
Lance Petterby’s car had hardly disappeared around a turn in the road when a large, handsome woman appeared at the kitchen door of the house and, after one hasty glance at the newcomers, wiped her hands on a kitchen apron and bore down upon them.
“Land sakes!” she cried. “Miss Dorothy Dale and Miss Tavia! You did give me the surprise of my life, but I’m that glad to see you. Where is Major Dale, Miss Dorothy?”
CHAPTER XXII
A SURPRISE
Dorothy had great difficulty in explaining to the kindly woman that her father not only had not accompanied her and Tavia to Desert City, but had no intention of doing so.
“But two young girls like you havin’ the courage to travel all this ways alone!” the woman ejaculated, staring at them as though, in Tavia’s words, they were “twin animals out of the zoo.” “If that don’t beat all!”
On the way to the house, and as briefly as possible, Dorothy explained to the woman—who was Mrs. Hank Ledger, wife of the foreman of the Hardin ranch—what had brought her to Colorado so unexpectedly.
The woman listened, her handsome head cocked to one side, and occasionally put in a pertinent question.
“Land sakes! I declare, that’s too bad,” she said, at the conclusion of Dorothy’s brief recital. “I can’t think what could have possessed the boy to have done such a thing. But there, that isn’t my business, I guess. Guess I’d better stir you up a bite to eat. Near starved, ain’t you?”
The girls were grateful for her good-hearted tact that spared them the embarrassment of further questioning.