The old gentleman stared. “Why, Lady-bird, what an idea! What would your Cousin Mary-Lou think? What would any of your other guests think? What—what are you thinking of Nancy?”
She hung her head. “I’m thinking of how he worships you, Dad, dear, and how he works early and late, and goes without his salary, and never spares himself——”
“I know, I know, I know all that,” he rejoined hastily. “No man ever had a better superintendent, nor more loyal, and when the old Altonia gets on her feet again, I’ll make it up to him, Nancy, I will, by the eternal! He won’t lose by his faithfulness, I promise you that! But when it comes to asking him to dinner, Lady-bird, why—Luke, you know, Luke’s just wild mountain stock, one jump away from the feuds and moonshine. If Dr. Darrow hadn’t taken a fancy to him, and seen how smart he was, as a youngster, he’d still be climbing over the rocks and taking pot shots from behind a tree!”
Her hazel eyes filled slowly with tears and her chin quivered. “You needn’t scold me about it,” she murmured. “It was only because he’s been so——”
He patted her soothingly. “There, there, Lady-bird, Lady-bug! Now, now! Of course her old daddy understands! It was just that you didn’t stop to think, that’s all!”
“I didn’t—stop—to think,” sobbed Nancy Carey.
They liked young Peter Parker from Pasadena, his senior partner and his senior partner’s daughter, and all their guests. They found him so amazingly juvenile and so merry and amiable and so intriguingly different from any one they had ever known.
“Cousin Mary-Lou,” who was the eighteen months’ widow of gallant Bob Lee Tenafee who had died a gentleman’s clean and speedy death in the hunting field, decided to give a house-party for him at her plantation, “Beulah-land.” Her Cousin ’Gene had dropped a hint in her ear, and Mary-Lou moved swiftly. “You surely don’t want to prowl around that stuffy old mill for more than a day, Peter Parker,” she said in her soft, caressing voice, dropping her r’s in the authentic manner poor Effie Darrow had adored.
“I do not,” he agreed gratefully. “I came at the earnest request of my earnest parent, and after an earnest once over, I shall exit merrily.”
“Then shall we say to-morrow? Can you all come in time for dinner to-morrow?” the young widow gathered up the other diners in her brown and velvety gaze.