The Little Lady of the Big House / Маленькая хозяйка большого дома. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“You told me, Mr. Forrest, to remind you of the proofs of your Shorthorn book. They wired their second hurry-up yesterday.[365]”

“I won’t be able to tackle it myself,” Dick replied. “Will you please correct the typographical, submit the proofs to Mr. Manson for correction of fact – tell him be sure to verify that pedigree of King of Devon – and ship them off.”

Until eleven Dick received his managers and foremen. But not for a quarter of an hour after that did he get rid of his show manager, Mr. Pitts, with the tentative makeup of the catalogue for the first annual stock-sale on the ranch. By that time Mr. Bonbright was on hand with his sheaf of telegrams, and the lunch-hour was at hand ere they were cleaned up.

For the first time alone since he had seen the tally-ho off, Dick stepped out on his sleeping porch to the row of barometers and thermometers on the wall. But he had come to consult, not them, but the girl’s face that laughed from the round wooden frame beneath them.

“Paula, Paula,” he said aloud, “are you surprising yourself and me after all these years? Are you turning madcap[366] at sober middle age?”

He put on leggings and spurs to be ready for riding after lunch, and what his thoughts had been while buckling on the gear he epitomized to the girl in the frame.

“Play the game,” he muttered. And then, after a pause, as he turned to go: “A free field and no favor[367]… and no favor.”

* * *

“Really, if I don’t go soon, I’ll have to become a pensioner and join the philosophers of the madroño grove,” Graham said laughingly to Dick.

It was the time of cocktail assembling, and Paula, in addition to Graham, was the only one of the driving party as yet to put in an appearance.

“If all the philosophers together would just make one book!” Dick demurred. “Good Lord, man, you’ve just got to complete your book here. I got you started and I’ve got to see you through with it.”

Paula’s encouragement to Graham to stay on – mere stereotyped, uninterested phrases – was music to Dick. His heart leapt. After all, might he not be entirely mistaken? For two such mature, wise, middle-aged individuals as Paula and Graham any such foolishness was preposterous and unthinkable. They were not young things with their hearts on their sleeves[368].

“To the book!” he toasted. He turned to Paula. “A good cocktail,” he praised. “Paul, you excel yourself, and you fail to teach Oh Joy the art. His never quite touch yours. – Yes, another, please.”

Chapter XXI

Graham, riding solitary through the redwood canyons among the hills that overlooked the ranch center, was getting acquainted with Selim, the eleven-hundred-pound, coal-black gelding which Dick had furnished him in place of the lighter Altadena. As he rode along, learning the good nature, the roguishness and the dependableness of the animal, Graham hummed the words of the “Gypsy Trail” and allowed them to lead his thoughts. Quite carelessly, foolishly, thinking of bucolic lovers carving their initials on forest trees, he broke a spray of laurel and another of redwood. He had to stand in the stirrups to pluck a long-stemmed, five-fingered fern with which to bind the sprays into a cross. When the patteran was fashioned, he tossed it on the trail before him and noted that Selim passed over without treading upon it. Glancing back, Graham watched it to the next turn of the trail. A good omen, was his thought, that it had not been trampled.

More five-fingered ferns to be had for the reaching, more branches of redwood and laurel brushing his face as he rode, invited him to continue the manufacture of patterans, which he dropped as he fashioned them. An hour later, at the head of the canyon, where he knew the trail over the divide was difficult and stiff, he debated his course and turned back.

Selim warned him by nickering. Came an answering nicker from close at hand[369]. The trail was wide and easy, and Graham put his mount into a fox trot, swung a wide bend, and overtook Paula on the Fawn.

“Hello!” he called. “Hello! Hello!”

She reined in till he was alongside.

“I was just turning back,” she said. “Why did you turn back? I thought you were going over the divide to Little Grizzly.”

“You knew I was ahead of you?” he asked, admiring the frank, boyish way of her eyes straight-gazing into his.

“Why shouldn’t I? I had no doubt at the second patteran.”

“Oh, I’d forgotten about them,” he laughed guiltily. “Why did you turn back?”

She waited until the Fawn and Selim had stepped over a fallen alder across the trail, so that she could look into Graham’s eyes when she answered:

“Because I did not care to follow your trail. – To follow anybody’s trail,” she quickly amended. “I turned back at the second one.”

He failed of a ready answer[370], and an awkward silence was between them. Both were aware of this awkwardness, due to the known but unspoken things.

“Do you make a practice of dropping patterans?” Paula asked.