"I don't know what Dad will say when he gets the bill for these dresses," Paloma confessed.
"Your father is a mighty queer man," Mrs. Strange observed. "I haven't so much as laid eyes on him."
Paloma nodded. "Yes. And he's getting more peculiar all the time; I can't make out what ails him."
"Where is he now?" asked Alaire.
"Heaven knows! Out in the barn or under the house." Taking advantage of the dressmaker's momentary absence from the room, Paloma continued in a whisper: "I wish you'd talk to Dad and see what you make of him. He's absolutely—queer. Mrs. Strange seems to have a peculiar effect on him. Why, it's almost as if—"
"What?"
"Well, I suppose I'm foolish, but—I'm beginning to believe in spells.
You know, Mrs. Strange's husband is a sort of—necromancer."
"How silly!"
There was no further opportunity for words, as the woman reappeared at that instant; but a little later Alaire went in search of Blaze, still considerably mystified. As she neared the farm buildings she glimpsed a man's figure hastily disappearing into the barn. The figure bore a suspicious resemblance to Blaze Jones, yet when she followed he was nowhere to be seen. Now this was curious, for Texas barns are less pretentious than those of the North, and this one was little more than a carriage-house and a shelter for agricultural implements.
"Mr. Jones!" Alaire called. She repeated Blaze's name several times; then something stirred. The door of a harness closet opened cautiously, and out of the blackness peered Paloma's father. He looked more owlish than ever behind his big, gold-rimmed spectacles. "What in the world are you doing in there?" she cried.