“Well, he’s been west of Boston for almost a year, I should say, what with his work at the School of Forestry, and riding in Wyoming, and all, and he’s been here in the Big Sur since early in June.”
The doctor was a little puzzled; he did not quite understand and he did not at all like this hard serenity; she had not the look of a girl reunited to her lover, he told himself rather anxiously. Later on, when they were settling to bridge, he managed a worried word aside to Mrs. Featherstone.
“I wonder, Miss Fanny, if we bungled it?”
“Certainly not,” said Ginger’s Aunt Fan, comfortably. “She’ll have to stand off and act like her great-grandmother Valdés for awhile, of course—that’s part of the picture, but I’m not worrying—not about them, at least!” She reached a plump hand into a candy box on the next table. “Doctor, can’t you make it a camp misdemeanor for those girls to leave this stuff around?—Chocolate creams the size of young sofa cushions—”
And when she and her niece had gone to their joint cabin, three hours later, and the girl maintained her cool serenity, she rode blithely over it.
“All right, my dear! Keep it up! I glory in your spunk. But don’t you ever think you’re putting anything over on your Aunt Frances May!”
Dean Wolcott came to supper on Saturday night. The doctor said he was sorry he had not thought to include the little Scout, but the Ranger shook his head. “No, I’ve parked him at the cottage with Rusty, the Airedale, inside and the Mabel horse saddled and ready in case he has to do a hasty Paul Revere to get me. He’s reading Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawas, and listening for the telephone, and reflecting, chestily, that Edna couldn’t call him a ’Fraid-Cat if she saw him now. Edna is a slightly older cousin who has been a great help to her mother in making life miserable for him.”
“I’m simply mad about him,” the very blond girl whispered to Ginger. She was wearing a baby blue organdie and looked like the fairest of all the very young angels, and she had a slight lisp which one felt she had not made very stern efforts to eradicate. “I adore the way he talks, and the things he says—and that golden, patent-leather effect of hair—oh, and the way he carries himself, and everything!”
“Aside from that, you don’t admire him especially, I gather,” said Ginger, smiling carefully at her. She felt like a swarthy gypsy beside her, and crudely strong and weathered.