California -- Fiction; Ranch life -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Then she hurried into the house. The soldier guest was still sleeping,
the housekeeper reported. Ginger went on tiptoe to the door and
listened. There were the countless questions to ask him about Aleck;
she grudged every missed moment.
“We dare not wake him,” said Manuela with authority. “And he must eat
before he talks again. Go away, my heart. I will keep watch.” She sat
down again in a chair in the corridor and folded her hard brown hands
on her stomach. “Listen! Some one comes!”
There was the sound of a motor and Ginger went to see who it was--the
house party might have found worse going beyond, and turned back. It
was a car from the garage at San Luis Obispo, and before it reached the
house she saw that it carried one person beside the driver--a young man
who held himself singularly erect. He was, he announced, the cousin who
had been waiting, waiting all day, at San Luis Obispo, for Mr. Dean
Wolcott. He wanted to know where Mr. Wolcott was. His manner rather
conveyed that Mr. Wolcott might have met with foul play; that almost
anything might occur in a wilderness of this character.
Miss McVeagh explained that Mr. Dean Wolcott was sleeping; he was
greatly exhausted and had been asleep since morning.
The other Mr. Wolcott was clearly annoyed. The trip from Boston to
California, undertaken only a day after his cousin had landed from
England, had been wholly against his advice and judgment. He had been
unable to understand why his cousin could not have _mailed_ Miss
McVeagh her brother’s letter, and written her any details.
Ginger, looking levelly at him, saw at once that he had been and always
would be unable to understand. She said, very civilly, that she hoped
they would both rest for a few days at Dos Pozos before making the
return journey.
“Thank you, but that will be quite impossible,” said the young man,
hastily. “It will be necessary to leave Los Angeles to-morrow. The
entire Wolcott connection--” it was as if he had said--“The Allied
Nations,” or “The Nordic Peoples”--“will postpone the holiday
festivities until Mr. Dean Wolcott’s return.” He desired to be shown
where his cousin was sleeping, and he went briskly in to rouse him,
past the protesting Manuela.
Ginger went out of the house. Large as it was, there did not seem to be
room enough in it for the newcomer and herself. He brought her sharply
out of her mood of whispering gentleness, and she walked a little way
toward the bridge and planned to begin work at once on the permanent
structure of Aleck’s intention. A big and beautiful idea came to her;
there was no way of marking Aleck’s grave, but this bridge should be
built in his memory, inscribed to him. It brought the tears to her
eyes and she turned, at sound of feet on the path, and saw Dean Wolcott
coming toward her, and now, as in the morning, the sun was on him--this
time the evening sun, slipping swiftly down behind the hills.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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