It was midnight before healthy youth demanded sleep and dulled her
half-feigned agonies of self-pity. It was morning before she began to
feel really uneasy about Johnny. After her tantrum she slept late, so
that when she awoke it was past time for Johnny's arrival, supposing he
had started at sunrise, which she now admitted to herself was the most
sensible time for the flight. Eight o'clock--and he must have started,
else he would have called her up on the 'phone and told her he was not
coming. For that matter, he would have called up the night before if
he had not meant to do as she wanted him to do. Of course, Johnny was
awfully stubborn sometimes, and he might have waited until morning,
just to worry her. But he would have called up if he hadn't intended
to come. A little thing like hanging up her receiver would not bother
him, she argued, and a little obstacle like long-distance toll never
occurred to Mary V, whose idea of poverty was vague indeed.
He must have started this morning, at the latest. And he should have
been here before now. To make sure that he had not come while she
slept Mary V went to a window overlooking the open space between the
house and corrals. It was empty, but to make doubly sure she asked
Bedelia. For answer, Bedelia threatened to quit, declaring shrilly
that she would not work where nothing was safe under lock and key, and
a girl might work her fingers to the bone putting up jell for spoiled,
ungrateful, meddlesome Matties to waste, and so forth and so on.
Mary V wisely withdrew from the kitchen without having her question
answered. She asked no more questions of any one. In silk kimono and
Indian moccasins, one of her pet incongruities, she forthwith explored
the yard down by the corrals which the bunk house had hidden from her
view. There was no sign of Johnny Jewel's airplane anywhere. Mary V
was thorough, even to the point of looking for tracks of the little
wheels, but at last she was convinced, and returned to the porch to
digest the ominous fact of Johnny's failure to arrive.
He must have started,--she would not admit the possibility that he had
deliberately ignored her ultimatum,--but she would make sure. So she
called Tucson on the telephone and was presently in conversation with
the clerk at Johnny's hotel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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