The old Spanish-American house had been remodeled and rebuilt. In four years, he had found that Herefords, Berkshires, and Percherons may win a place in a man’s heart almost equal to that which a thoroughbred occupies. Then, a little daughter had come, and the final seal that stamps a man’s house as his home was placed upon “the castle on the hill.”
His lung had healed — he could not tell by any sign it gave that it was not as good as ever — and still he stayed on in the land of sunshine, which he had grown to love without realizing its hold upon him. Gradually, he had forgotten to say “when we go back home”; and when, at last, a letter came from a younger brother saying that he wished to buy the old place in Virginia if the Custer Penningtons did not expect to return to it, the colonel was compelled to face the issue squarely.
They had held a little family council — the colonel and Julia, his wife, with seven-year-old Custer and little one-year-old Eva. Eva, sitting in her mother’s lap, agreed with everyone. Custer, Jr. burst into tears at the very suggestion of leaving dear old Ganado.
“And what do you think about it, Julia?” asked the colonel.
“I love Virginia, dear,” she had replied; “but I think I love California even more, and I say it without disloyalty to my own state. It’s a different kind of love.”
“I know what you mean,” said her husband. “Virginia is a mother to us, California a sweetheart.”
And so, they stayed upon the Rancho del Ganado.
CHAPTER IV
WORK AND PLAY were inextricably entangled upon Ganado, the play being of a nature that fitted men better for their work, while the work, always in the open and usually from the saddle, they enjoyed fully as much as the play. While the tired businessman of the city was expending a day’s vitality and nervous energy in an effort to escape from the turmoil of the mad rush hour and find a strap from which to dangle homeward amid the toxic effluvia of the melting pot, Colonel Pennington plunged and swam in the cold, invigorating waters of his pool after a day of labor fully as constructive and profitable as theirs.
“One more dive!” he called, balancing upon the end of the springboard, “and then I’m going out. Eva ought to be here by the time we’re dressed, hadn’t she? I’m about famished.”
“I haven’t heard the train whistle yet, though it must be due,” replied Mrs. Pennington. “You and Boy make so much noise swimming that we’ll miss Gabriel’s trump if we happen to be in the pool at the time!”
The colonel, Custer, and Grace Evans dived simultaneously and, coming up together, raced for the shallow end where Mrs. Evans and her hostess were preparing to leave the pool. The girl, reaching the hand rail first, arose laughing and triumphant.
“My foot slipped as I dived,” cried the younger Pennington, wiping the water from his eyes, “or I’d have caught you!”
“No alibis, Boy!” laughed the colonel. “Grace beat you fair and square.”
“Race you back for a dollar, Grace!” challenged the young man.
“You’re on,” she cried. “One, two, three — go!”
They were off. The colonel, who had preceded them leisurely into the deep water, swam close to his son as the latter was passing a yard in the lead. Simultaneously, the young man’s progress ceased. With a Comanche-like yell, he turned upon his father, and the two men grappled and went down. When they came up, spluttering and laughing, the girl was climbing out of the pool.
“You win, Grace!” shouted the colonel.
“It’s a frame-up!” cried Custer. “He grabbed me by the ankle!”
“Well, who had a better right?” demanded the girl. “He’s referee.”
“He’s a fine mess for a referee!” grumbled Custer good-naturedly.
“Run along and get your dollar and pay up like a gentleman,” admonished his father.
“What do you get out of it? What do you pay him, Grace?”
They were still bantering as they entered the house and sought their several rooms to dress.
Guy Evans strolled from the walled garden of the swimming pool to the open arch that broke the long pergola beneath which the driveway ran along the north side of the house. Here, he had an unobstructed view of the broad valley stretching away to the mountains in the distance.
Down the center of the valley, a toy train moved noiselessly. As he watched it, he saw a puff of white rise from the tiny engine. It rose and melted in the evening air before the thin, clear sound of the whistle reached his ears. The train crawled behind the green of trees and disappeared.
He knew that it had stopped at the station and that a slender, girlish figure was alighting with a smile for the porter and a gay word for the conductor who had carried her back and forth for years upon her occasional visits to the city a hundred miles away. Now, the chauffeur was taking her bag and carrying it to the roadster that she would drive home along the wide, straight boulevard that crossed the valley — utterly ruining a number of perfectly good speed laws.
Two minutes elapsed, and the train crawled out from behind the trees and continued its way up the valley — a little black caterpillar with spots of yellow twinkling along its sides. As twilight deepened, the lights from ranch houses and villages sprinkled the floor of the valley. Like jewels scattered from a careless hand, they fell singly and in little clusters; and then, the stars, serenely superior, came forth to assure the glory of a perfect California night.
The headlights of a motor car turned in at the driveway. Guy went to the east porch and looked in at the living room door where some of the family had already collected.
“Eva’s coming!” he announced.
She had been gone since the day before, but she might have been returning from a long trip abroad if every one’s eagerness to greet her was any criterion. Unlike city dwellers, these people had never learned to conceal the lovelier emotions of their hearts behind a mask of assumed indifference. Perhaps the fact that they were not forever crowded shoulder to shoulder with strangers permitted them an enjoyable naturalness which the dweller in the wholesale districts of humanity can never know; for what a man may reveal of his heart among friends he hides from the unsympathetic eyes of others — though it may be the noblest of his possessions. With a rush, the car topped the hill, swung up the driveway, and stopped at the corner of the house. A door flew open, and the girl leaped from the driver’s seat.
“Hello, everybody!” she cried.
Snatching a kiss from her brother as she passed him, she fairly leaped upon her mother, hugging, kissing, laughing, dancing, and talking all at once. Espying her father, she relinquished a disheveled and laughing mother and dived for him.
“Most adorable Pops!” she cried as he caught her in his arms. “Are you glad to have your little nuisance back? I’ll bet you’re not. Do you love me? You won’t when you know how much I’ve spent, but oh, Popsy, I had such a good time! That’s all there was to it, and oh, Momsie, who, who, who do you suppose I met? Oh, you’d never guess — never, never!”
“Whom did you meet?” asked her mother.
“Yes, little one, whom did you meet?” inquired her brother.
“And he’s perfectly gorgeous,” continued the girl, as if there had been no interruption; “and I danced with him — oh, such divine dancing! Oh, Guy Evans! Why how do you do? I never saw you.”
The young man nodded glumly.
“How are you, Eva?” he said.
“Mrs. Evans is here, too, dear,” her mother reminded her.
The girl curtsied before her mother’s guest and then threw her arm about the older woman’s