"I've been up in Sacramento County with my people--maybe Crowder told you."

"Maybe--I not good memly, I get heap old man." He made a move for the parlor door, his face wrinkled with his innocent grin. "Miss Lolly and Miss Clist here; awful glad see you," and he threw the door open.

Mark took a deep breath and strode forward, pulling his cuffs over his hands, which at that moment seemed to him to emerge from his sleeves large and unlovely as two hams. The place always abashed him, its sober air of wealth, its effortless refinement, its dainty feminine atmosphere.

No brutal male presence--one never thought of Chinese servants as men--seemed ever to have disturbed with a recurring, habitual foot its almost cloistral quietude. Now with memories of his own home fresh in his mind, dinner in the kitchen, the soiled tablecloth, the sizzling pans on the stove, he felt he had no place there and was an impostor. Their greeting increased his discomfort. They were so kind, so hospitable, making him come into the dining room and take a cup of coffee. It was an uprush of that angry loyalty, that determination to hold close to his own, which made him say as soon as he was seated,

"I've been home for two weeks."

"Home?" said Lorry gently.

And, "Where _is_ your home?" came from Aunt Ellen, as if she had just recognized the fact that he must have one somewhere but had never thought about it before.

The sound of his voice, gruff as a day laborer's after these flute-sweet tones, increased his embarra.s.sment. Nevertheless he determined that he would tell them about his home.

"Up in Sacramento County not far from the tules. My father's a rancher, has a little bit of land there."

"Yes, Charlie Crowder told us," said Lorry. She didn't seem to notice the "little bit of land," it was just as if he'd said four or five thousand acres and described a balconied house with striped awnings and cushioned chairs.

He cast a glance of grat.i.tude toward her, met her eyes and dropped his own to his cup. There they encountered his hand, holding the coffee spoon, the little finger standing out from the others in a tricksy curve.

With an inward curse he straightened it, sudden red dyeing his face to the temples. He began to hate himself and didn't know how to go on.

Chrystie unexpectedly came to the rescue.

"Sacramento County," she exclaimed with sudden animation, "not far from the tules! There was a holdup round there two or three weeks ago. I read it in the papers."

Aunt Ellen moved restlessly. She wanted to get to her chair in the drawing-room.

"Holdup?" she murmured. "They're always having holdups somewhere."

"Not like this," said Chrystie. "It was a good one--Knapp and Garland--and they shot Wells Fargo's messenger."

"It was while I was there," said Mark, "up toward the foothills above our ranch."

The young ladies were immensely interested. They wanted to hear all about it and moved into the parlor to be settled and comfortable. They tried to make Mark sit in a ma.s.sive, gold-trimmed armchair, but he had his wits about him by this time and took a humbler seat beside Lorry. Aunt Ellen sank into her rocker with a sigh of achievement and Chrystie perched on the piano stool. Then he told them the story, forgetting his bashfulness under the spell of their attentive eyes.

"Why can't they catch them," said Chrystie, "if they know their names?"

He couldn't help laughing at that.

"Why, of course they have other names," Lorry explained. "They don't go about as Knapp and Garland."

"But people must see them," Chrystie insisted, "somebody must know what they look like."

Mark had to straighten it out for her.

"Their friends do--ranchers up in the hills, and their pals in the towns. But the sheriffs and the general public don't. When they're out for business they cover their faces, tie handkerchiefs or gunny sacks round them."

Chrystie shuddered delightedly.

"How awful they must be! I'd love to be held up just to see them."

Mark and Lorry looked at one another and smiled, as age and experience smile at the artlessness of youth. It was an interchange of mutual understanding, a flash of closer intimacy, and as such lifted the young man to sudden heights.

"Where do they put the money?" said Aunt Ellen, her thought processes, under the unusual stimulus of a conversation on bandits, stirred to energy.

"That's what we'd like to know, Mrs. Tisdale. They have a cache somewhere but n.o.body's been able to find it. I saw the sheriff before I left and _he_ thinks it's up in the hills among the chaparral."

"Is the messenger dead?" asked Lorry.

"Oh, no--he's getting on all right. They don't shoot to kill, just put him out of business for the time being."

"That's merciful," Aunt Ellen announced in a sleepy voice.

Chrystie, finding no more delicious shudders in the subject, twirled round on the stool and began softly picking out notes on the piano. For a s.p.a.ce Mark and Lorry talked--it was about the ranch near the tules--rather dull as it came to Chrystie through her picking. The young man kept looking at Lorry's face, then dropping his glance to the floor, abashed before the gentle attention of her eyes, fearful his own might say too much. He thought it was just her sweetness that made her ask about his people, but everything about Mark Burrage interested her. Had he guessed it he would have been as much surprised as she had she known that he thought her beautiful.

Presently Chrystie's notes took form and became a tinkling tune. She tried it over once then whirled round on the stool.

"There--I've got it! Listen. Isn't it just like it, Lorry?"

Lorry immediately ceased talking and listened while the tune ran a halting course through several bars.

"Like what?" she said. "I don't know what it's meant to be."

"Oh!" Chrystie groaned, then shook her head at Mark. "Trust your relations to take down your pride. Why, it's the Castanet song from 'The Zingara!' Tum-tum-tum, tum-tum-tum," and she began swaying her body in time, humming an air and banging out the accompaniment, "'With my castanets, with my castanets.' That's exactly the way it goes only I don't know the words." She whirled again to Mark. "It's the most _delicious_ thing! Have you seen it?"

He hadn't, and Chrystie sank together on the stool in reproachful surprise.

"Oh, Mr. Burrage, you _must_ go. Don't lose a minute, this very night."

Lorry breathed an embarra.s.sed "Chrystie!"

"I didn't mean _that_ and he knows it. I mean the soonest night _after_ tonight. We went yesterday and even Aunt Ellen loved it. Didn't you, Aunt Ellen?"

Aunt Ellen, startled from surrept.i.tious slumber, gave an unnaturally loud a.s.sent to which Chrystie paid no attention.

"It's the new opera at the Albion and Pancha Lopez is--" She threw out her hands and looked at the ceiling, words inadequate.

"She's never done anything so good before," Lorry said.

"All in red and orange, and coins everywhere. Orange stockings and cute little red slippers, and two long braids of black hair. Oh, down to there," Chrystie thrust out her foot, her skirt drawn close over a stalwart leg, on which, just above the knee, she laid her finger tips.

Her eyes on Mark were as unconscious as a baby's. "I don't think it's all her own, it's too long--I'll ask Charlie Crowder."

Aunt Ellen had not gone off again and to prove it said,

"How would he know?"

"Well he'd see it, wouldn't he? He'd see it when she took off her hat, all wound round her head, yards and yards of it. No, it's false, it was pinned on under that little cap thing. And after the second act when she came on to bow she carried a bunch of flowers--oh, that big," her arms outlined a wide ellipse, "the same colors as her dress, red carnations and some sort of yellowish flower I couldn't see plainly."