"She's cleaned the place out!" I cried, with a malicious enjoyment of the expression on his face. "Lamp, throw rugs, ash trays--everything's gone! And you're the smart boy who's been bawling me out for not checking up on people before I give them what they want. I'd give toilet paper to a stranger off the highway, maybe, but believe me, before I'd give anyone a pass key I'd be pretty sure--"
Grant was getting up slowly, starting toward the cabin. I leaned against him, giggling.
"It's all a joke!" I gasped. "I fixed it up with that woman to ask you for the key--she didn't really take those things out of the cabin--so I'd be able to get back at you for all the things you said about me. I wanted you to feel foolish, for once. It was just a joke!"
A few minutes later Grant strode into the living room, where I was reading a magazine Mrs. Clark found in one of the cabins.
"A joke, eh?" he said grimly. He was giving me that withering look again, and this time I had a peculiar feeling that I deserved it. "Well, if it was a joke, your peppy little girlfriend was the one who played it. Both of the wool blankets are gone from the beds in 16!"
The influx into Banning of people with asthma, bronchitis, sinus trouble, arthritis, and common colds continued into the spring. Cultivated sweet peas were appearing in the wake of the almond and peach blossoms, wild flowers were spreading themselves extravagantly over the whole desert, and the fields behind our motel were splashed with color. Some careless giant had trailed dirty fingers across the snowy mountain tops. A pair of plucky birds were busily building a nest in the rear of garage 16, almost directly above my washing machine. The days were so breathtakingly lovely that it was hard to believe that less than ninety miles away there were fog and cloudiness, and people with persistent coughs and sniffles.
Nature's springtime orgy made us feel as though we should do a little to keep up with her. So, the first time Oliv Snyder came around, we made a deal with him.
Oliv Snyder was a gardener, obviously, and--so he said--an ex journalism teacher.
The latter epithet I doubted. I never heard him saying "you was" or "I seen," and David never caught him splitting an infinitive, but somehow I couldn't visualize him lecturing to an absorbed audience on the intricacies of slinging the English language around.
He was a short, moody little creature with white hair which curled at the ends. He wore a cap with a frayed, mothbeaten brim, and his elbows and knees, and various other portions of his anatomy and underwear, were visible through the holes in his clothing. His theme song, patterned after that of Snow White's seven dwarves, must have been "Hiccup while you work," for on the several occasions that he worked around the grounds of the motel he devoted fully as much energy to his gusty staccato hiccups as to his gardening.