But Peggy suddenly remembered that her brother was not supposed to know how ill he had been.
Then, almost at the same time, an interruption followed in the form of an extraordinary sound, or combination of sounds. First there was the long-drawn-out wail of annoyance and protest made by a small western burro; then an intermingling of faint shrieks of fear with gay laughter.
Peggy and Bettina both ran forward to the narrow opening between the two cliff walls. Then they beheld an extremely pretty, rather plump woman, with rose-colored cheeks and grey in her brown hair, riding astride a burro. The burro was being lead by another woman of the same age, extraordinarily like and yet unlike the other one. The woman on foot was more slender and paler, her hair was darker and not grey, and her eyes a deeper blue.
“Peggy, darling, for goodness sake help me get your mother off this beast,” she called out as soon as the two girls were inside the defile, “I have had to drag both the animal and Mollie Webster every inch of the way. See, Mollie, I told you that our camp was not far from this old cliff dwelling which the girls and I discovered and adopted the other day. You might easily have walked here.”
“So I might and would have, Polly O’Neill Burton, had I dreamed that you were going to make this wretched animal actually trot with me across a stone wilderness.”
During her protest, with some difficulty, Mrs. Webster was being persuaded to dismount from her burro by Peggy and Bettina. But she seemed not to have acquired the art of making the proper beginning, for her too long and too full skirt kept getting twisted around her.
“Better wear a proper Camp Fire costume, especially adapted for a Camp Fire guardian at the Grand Canyon of Arizona, Mollie,” Mrs. Burton suggested, going forward and leaving the girls to find some place to fasten the burro, when finally her beloved twin sister had made the descent to earth in safety.
Mrs. Burton’s costume was in fact charming and so simple that one would not easily have known how expensive it was. She wore tan-colored, high kid boots, wrinkling above the foot like mousquetaire gloves, a khaki-colored broadcloth coat and a short skirt with trousers of the same material beneath. Her hat was of French felt, a little deeper shade of brown, and trimmed with a soft red scarf.
“Billy, you look like an Indian chief with that blanket wrapped about you, provided one does not look too carefully on the inside,” she announced. “Hope the tea isn’t all gone; your mother needs some refreshment, although I don’t care for any.”
Then walking over to the edge of the cliff Mrs. Burton stood looking down, with a curious sensation of fascination and fear.