Mrs. Tiffany, unturned by this breeze of criticism, ran along on her own tack.

"His manners _are_ a little forward, but he has a nice way of speaking. I'm sure he is a gentleman, at bottom. You can't expect such a young man, who has been obliged to work his way, to have all the graces at once. They've brought down their town clothes--I saw them last Sunday--so you needn't be afraid of that. I've asked Mr. Heath, too."

"Is that by way of another introduction?" asked Judge Tiffany. His eyes looked at her severely, but his beard showed that he was smiling gently again. Half his joy in a welded marriage lay in his appreciation of her humors, as though one should laugh at himself.

"Oh, there's no doubt that _he's_ a gentleman. He is less loud, somehow, than Mr. Chester, though he hasn't his charm. It seems there is the most wonderful boy friendship between them."

"Where did you get all this insight into the social life of our employees?" asked Judge Tiffany; and then, "Mattie, you've been exposing yourself to the night air again."

"Over at their camp last evening," said Mrs. Tiffany. "Well, and isn't it my business to look after--after that side of the ranch?" she added.

The Judge had dropped the book now; his senses were alert to the game which never grew old to him--"Mattie-baiting" he had named it.

"Mattie," he said, "with a pretty and marriageable, dowered and maiden niece on your hands, a new era is opening in your life of pa.s.sionate self-sacrifice. It used to be orphan children and neglected wives of farm hands. Now it is presentable but neglected bachelors. Your darling match for Eleanor, I suppose, would be some young soul s.n.a.t.c.hed from evil courses, pruned, trimmed, and delivered at the altar with 'Made by Mattie Tiffany' branded on his wings. Spare, O spare your innocent niece!"

"Edward, I never thought of it in that light!" cried Mrs. Tiffany; and she bent herself to furious crocheting. After a time, and when the Judge had resumed his book, she looked up and added:

"It might be worse, though, than a young man who had made it all himself."

Judge Tiffany burst into laughter. Then, seeing her bend closer over her pink yarns, he grew grave, reached for the hand which held the needles, and kissed it.

That was her reward of childless matrimony, as the appreciation of her humors was his.

While they sat thus, in one of their comfortable hours, the guests were come. The Morses appeared first. He was a pleasant, hollow-chested little man; his delicacy of lung gave him his excuse for playing gentleman farmer. She, half-Spanish, carried bulk for the family and carried it well. The Andalusian showed in her coy yet open air, in her small, broad hand and foot, in a languorous liquidity of eye. Their son, a well-behaved and pretty youth of twelve, and their daughter, two years older, rode behind them on the back seat. The daughter bore one of those mosaic names with which the mixed race has sprinkled California--Teresa del Vinal Morse. A pretty, delicate tea-rose thing, she stood at an age of divided appreciations. In the informal society of the Santa Lucia colony, she was listening half the time to her elders, taking a shadowy interest in their sayings and opinions; for the rest, she was turning on Theodore, that childish brother, an illuminated understanding.

The Goodyears arrived with a little flourish. Their trap, which she drove herself and which was perhaps a little too English to be useful or appropriate on a Californian road, the straight, tailor lines of her suit--all displayed that kind of quiet, refined ostentation which, very possibly, shrieks as loud to G.o.d as the diamond rings on a soiled finger. Mrs. Tiffany, who had met the Morses on the lawn, tripped clear across the rose-border to meet the Goodyears; did it with entire unconsciousness of drawing any distinction. As by right, Mrs. Goodyear appropriated the great green arm-chair under the oak tree, from which throne she radiated a delicate patronage upon the company.

The others followed by twos and threes. Montgomery Lee, fresh-faced English University man, raising prunes on his patrimony of a younger son; the Roach girls, plump Californian old maids, and their pleasant little Yankee mother; the Ruggleses, a young married couple. Careless farmers, Mr. and Mrs. Ruggles; but they had the good nature which is the virtue of that defect. This, and the common interest in their three plump, mischievous babies, gave them general popularity in the colony.

Within five minutes, the company had followed the law of such middle-aged groups of familiars, and separated by s.e.xes. The men drifted over to the piazza, lit cigars, hoisted their knees, and talked, first, of the prune picking, their trouble with help, the rather bootless effort of a group in San Jose to form a Growers'

a.s.sociation; then of that city where lay their more vital interests.

Goodyear had just been to San Francisco on a flying trip; he brought back fresh gossip: The Bohemian Club had the "Jinks" in rehearsal; a new-discovered poet had written the book; it was to be (so the Sire declared) the greatest in club history.

"As usual," smiled Judge Tiffany.

They were saying about the Pacific Union Club that the Southern Pacific had raised its rates to Southern points. One might have sensed that shadow which hangs always over commercial California in the sombreness which froze the group at this news. From five minutes of pessimistic discussion, Goodyear led them by a scattered fire of personalities. Billy Darnton was going to give a bull's head breakfast at San Jacinto. Al Hemphill was coming to it all the way from New York. Charlie Bates had pulled out for the new gold diggings in the Mojave desert, rich again in antic.i.p.ation, although he had to leave San Francisco secretly to escape the process servers.

"Tea, gentlemen!" called Mrs. Tiffany, from her nasturtium bower in the shadow of the great oak.

"Just when we are getting comfortable," her husband growled pleasantly; and he made no move to rise. The women sat at ease about the tea-table. Their talk, beginning with the marvelous Ruggles babies, had run lightly past clothes and help, and fallen into the hands of Mrs. Goodyear. She, too, was full of San Francisco. Apart, under the grape arbor, Teresa Morse and her brother were snaring lizards--playing like two well-behaved babies miraculously grown tall.

"There's Eleanor," suddenly spoke Teresa. At the word, she dropped her lizard, started forward; and stopped as she came out into full view of the road.

Eleanor, in fresh white, bareheaded under her parasol, was approaching between two young men. The slighter of the two men moved a little apart; the heavier, in whom Mrs. Tiffany recognized with some apprehension the new protege, Mr. Bertram Chester, walked very close up. He was peering under the parasol, which Eleanor dropped in his direction from time to time without visibly effecting his removal. It seemed from his wide gestures, from the smile which became apparent as he drew nearer, that he was talking ardently.

In the other man, Mrs. Tiffany recognized that Mr. Heath who had the boy friendship with Bertram Chester. He was putting in a word now and then, it appeared. When he spoke, Eleanor turned polite attention upon him; and then resumed her guarded att.i.tude toward that dynamo buzzing at her left. Insensible of the company on the lawn, they pa.s.sed behind the grape arbor which fringed the gate and which hid them temporarily from view; and the one-sided conversation became audible.

"It wasn't a _patch_ on fights I've had with 'em. Down home, I used to fight steers right along. That's nothing to a n.i.g.g.e.r who used to work for us in Tulare. He'd jump on their backs and reach over and bite their noses till they hollered quits. Sure thing he did!" It died out as they turned in at the gate and faced the group about the trees.

Mrs. Goodyear made a gesture of an imaginary lorgnette toward her high-bridged nose. Mrs. Tiffany gathered herself and ran over to the gate. It was Mr. Heath--she noticed as she advanced--who was blushing.

Bertram Chester stood square on his two feet smiling genially. As for Eleanor, she maintained that sweet inscrutability of face which became, as years and trouble came on, her great and unappreciated personal a.s.set.

Young Chester spoke first:

"I knew Miss Gray was coming down this afternoon--so I laid for her on the road--didn't I, Miss Gray?"

"Very nice of you, I'm sure," murmured Mrs. Tiffany, though she bit her lip before she spoke--"won't you come over to meet our friends?"

Eleanor had darted ahead, to the pats of the women and the adoring hugs of Teresa Morse.

Mrs. Tiffany saw with relief that her disgraced protege managed his end of the introduction very well, although he did make a slight advance to shake hands with the critical Mrs. Goodyear. He gave no sign to show that he perceived the men over on the piazza. Mr. Heath, his Fidus Achates, cast a slight glance in their direction; then, seeing Bertram settle himself down in an arm-chair and begin at once to address Mrs. Goodyear, he sat down likewise, suffused with an air of young embarra.s.sment. Mrs. Ruggles, seated next to him, began with visible tact the effort to put him at his ease.

Mr. Chester, as he talked to Mrs. Goodyear, looked always toward Eleanor. She, helping Mrs. Tiffany with the tea things, turning a caressing word now and then toward Teresa Morse, might not have noticed, for all her expression showed.

The men came over for tea, were introduced. Mrs. Tiffany, in her foolish anxiety for the manners and appearance of her protege, noted that he was at home with men, at least.

Mr. Goodyear, indeed, clutched with his eye at the blue-and-gold b.u.t.ton in the lapel of Bertram's coat, at the figure of him, and at the name.

"You aren't Chester who played tackle on the Berkeley Varsity last season?" he asked. An old Harvard oar, Goodyear kept up his interest in athletics.

"Tackle and half," said the youth. "Yes, sir."

"Well, well, I remember you in the game!" said Goodyear.

Mrs. Tiffany, now that her protege no longer needed watching, had returned to her tea things.

"Eleanor," she called. "Will you run into the house and get that box of chocolate wafers that's over the ice chest?"

"Let me carry 'em for you, Miss Gray," put in Chester, breaking through a college reminiscence of Goodyear's.

Eleanor never flicked an eyelash as she announced:

"I should be very glad."

Tiffany, glancing over the group, noted with comparative relief that none but she, Goodyear, and the young persons involved, had heard this pa.s.sage.

As they moved toward the house, Bertram opened upon Miss Gray at once.

"This is the second chance I've had alone at you," he said.

"We are rather conspicuous," she burst out.

"Oh, n.o.body'll mind. A girl always thinks everybody is looking at her.

Besides, I wouldn't care if they were. I've wanted to tell you something, and I couldn't with Heath trailing us. You've got awfully nice eyes."

Eleanor seemed to see neither the necessity nor the convenience of an answer.