“Here I am—all booted and spurred and ready to ride,” Marjorie Dean called out gaily to Veronica Lynne as Ronny entered the cool spacious patio of Lucero de la Mana?a, the Lynnes’ beautiful ranch home in southern California.
Marjorie was a feast for beauty-loving eyes as she sat on the wide stone edge of the silver-spraying fountain with its musical murmur of water splashing into a white marble basin. The mannish cut of her gray knickered riding clothes merely made her look more than ever like a little girl. From under her little round gray hat with its bit of irridescent color her bright brown curls showed in a soft fluff. She sat smiling at Ronny, a sleeve of her riding coat pushed back from one rounded arm, one hand trailing idly in the clear water of the basin.
“You sound like Paul Revere. At least, that is 4what he said, supposedly, on the night of his famous ride. You look like Leila Harper’s friend, Beauty, even in riding togs.” Ronny came over to Marjorie, smiling.
“I only remember Leila Harper.” Marjorie glanced up teasingly.
“You are altogether too forgetful,” Ronny lightly reproved.
She paused, looking amusedly down at her pretty chum. She was wearing a white linen, knickered riding suit which was vastly becoming. Her wide gray eyes gave out a happy light that her heart switched on every time her gaze came to rest upon Marjorie.
Since first she had known Marjorie Dean, back in their senior high school days at Sanford, she had cherished a pet dream. That dream had come true six weeks previous when Marjorie, her father and mother had arrived from the East to make Ronny a long deferred visit. To range the great ranch, pony-back, with Marjorie riding beside her, ever a gracious, inspiriting comrade, was Ronny’s highest desire toward happiness.
“How long have you been waiting for me, Miss Paul Revere?” she playfully questioned. “Why didn’t you come to Ronny’s room and hang around? Why so unsociable?” Ronny drew down her face into an aggrieved expression which her dancing 5eyes contradicted. “I’ve known you to be much more cordial at old Wayland Hall.”
“Oh, I’ve only been here about three minutes. I’m miles more sociable than I was at Wayland Hall,” laughed Marjorie. “I thought you’d be ready and ahead of me. When I found you weren’t, I couldn’t resist stopping to dabble my hand in the water. I love the patio, Ronny, and adore the fountain. If I lived here three months longer I should be so steeped in the beauty of Mana?a that I’d forget the East—maybe.” Her “maybe” was stronger than her light prediction.
“The magic spell of Mana?a is upon you,” Ronny confidently asserted. “There is a mystical, romantic beauty about Mana?a. I have searched for it over and over again in the East, but have never found it. It seems to me our Mana?a is Nature’s own ideal of grandeur and beauty. I think the Spanish influence in the house and about the ranch heightens its claim to the romantic. Hamilton Arms has a certain stateliness of beauty, all its own. But has it anything more romantically beautiful than this patio?”
“It’s true as you live, Ronny Lynne,” agreed Marjorie gaily.
“You couldn’t love the patio better than I do.” Ronny cast a fond glance about the great square-covered court with its central crystal-spraying 6fountain and its ancient stone floor, gay with rugs and colorful Navajo blankets. The few inviting lounging chairs, the reading stand piled with current magazines, the quaint leather-covered Spanish couch, long and narrow, and heaped with gorgeous-hued silken cushions seemed only to accentuate the primitive charm of the old-time inclosure. Above it a railed-in Spanish balcony extended around the four sides. It was bright with flowering plants and further beautified by the masses of trailing vines which clambered over the old-time mahogany railing.
“I know it.” Marjorie gave a quick nod. “I’d not wish to love it as much as Hamilton Arms. I never thought I could care more for the Arms than dear Castle Dean. But I do. My whole heart is bound up in it, and Hamilton. I hope that I—that—we—will—” Marjorie stopped, her color deepening. “I hope Hal and I will live at Hamilton some day.” She continued in shy haste to finish what she had begun to say when girlish embarrassment had overtaken her.
“I believe Hamilton to be the one place for you and Hal to live,” Ronny made hearty response. “It would be splendid if General and Captain should decide to live in Hamilton Estates, too. ‘Where the treasure is, there shall the heart be also,’ you know. You are General’s and Captain’s treasure, and Hamilton 7is your treasure, so why shouldn’t you all get together and be happy? None of you have really anything special to bind you to Sanford. That is, not as you have at Hamilton.” Ronny smiled very tenderly at Marjorie’s glowing face.
“It’s different with me,” Ronny continued. “My treasure is Father. So Mana?a means most of any place on earth to me. I love Hamilton devotedly. Remember, there are plenty of Travelers to help complete the dormitory, but only one Traveler to comfort a lonely man. Father has considered me above himself always. Now I must begin to consider him.”
Marjorie sprang up from her seat upon the fountain’s stone edge. “It’s odd to me still, Ronny—being engaged to be married to Hal,” she confessed as she shyly busied herself with the drying of her wet hand with her handkerchief.
Ronny nodded sympathetically. “I always believed it would happen some day,” she said. “You can’t help but feel strange about it, though. You’ve hardly seen him since college closed.”
“But I’m going to see him soon.” The note of unmistakable happiness in Marjorie’s reply was in itself convincing of the true state of the little Lieutenant’s heart.
The two friends had now passed through the arched stone doorway of the patio and stepped out 8upon the lawn. They crossed it to the ancient brick drive and followed the drive toward a point near the heavy iron entrance gates, where a young Mexican boy stood holding the bridles of two horses. The girls were going for a ride before sunset.
“Bueno; muy bueno, Ramon. Muchas gracias (Good; very good, Ramon. Thank you very much),” Ronny brightly smiled her further thanks at the pleased groom.
Ramon showed white teeth, acknowledging her thanks in Spanish. Due to her love of action Marjorie had learned to ride with a readiness which delighted and amazed Ronny. She had picked for Marjorie a handsome white pony which she had fancifully named Dawn. Pony and rider had quickly become fast friends. Ronny’s own pet mount, Lightning, a soft black thoroughbred that deserved his name, was the admiration and the despair of the majority of the cowboys on the ranch. Few besides Ronny and Mr. Lynne had been able to stay long upon his back. He obeyed Ronny because he loved her.
“Your going home will leave a horrible blank space at my hearthstone,” Ronny regretfully told Marjorie as they rode their ponies slowly through the opened gates and out onto a broad trail which descended gradually in an easterly direction.
“I wish you could be in two places at once,” Marjorie 9returned with a soft little sigh. “I hate to leave you, Ronny. What are we going to do without you on the campus? What are Page and Dean without their greatest show feature? Think of all you’ve done as a Traveler for the good of Hamilton. I haven’t dared write Miss Susanna and the girls that you weren’t coming back. Does your father know yet what good fortune’s in store for him?”
“No; I’ve not broached the subject to him yet. Before long he will probably ask me when I think of going East. Then I shall say ‘Not at all,’ and stick to it.”
“You’ll simply have to come East to—to—” She paused, her eyes meeting Ronny’s with a significantly happy light.
“Oh, of course, then,” Ronny smilingly emphasized.
“You are to be one of my bridesmaids, Ronny,” Marjorie decreed. “I’ve been thinking quite a lot about my wedding. I have an idea that it will be different from most weddings, I’d like to have gathered around me that day the girls I’ve known and loved best. I’m going to try to find a place for them all in my bridal procession. I’ve not settled upon a single thing yet, but I have just one inspiration that I hope I can carry out.”
“When is it to be, Marjorie?” Ronny questioned 10with the lighting of her fair face which Marjorie loved to see.
“I don’t quite know yet. It will all depend on when the dormitory is finished. I—I haven’t made any plans for it except I’ve thought to myself about the kind of wedding I’d like to have. I’ve said more to you than I have even to Captain,” Marjorie declared with a shy laugh.
“I am highly honored, Marvelous Manager.” Ronny leaned to the right in her saddle with a respectful bow. “Having marvelously managed everything and everybody for a period of years on the campus, may we not expect you to manage your own wedding with eclat?”
“Don’t expect too much,” Marjorie warned laughingly.
As they talked the ponies had been impatiently enduring the slow walk to which their riders, absorbed in confidences, had put them. The trail was broad and smooth; wide enough for two ponies to run on, side by side. It dipped gradually down into a green valley of oak, larch and aspen trees. There the trail narrowed to a bridle path, winding in and out among wooded growths, and overhanging steep ravines. After half a mile it emerged from shadowed woods into the sunshine of the open country, growing wider again.
“There he is!” Ronny had been keeping up a 11bright look-out ahead. Her white-clad arm began a vigorous signaling to a horseman who had reined in near a large rock some distance ahead of them. He was sitting on a big bay horse, waiting for the riders to come up.
Every day, since Marjorie had learned to ride the two girls had gone pony-back at sunset to meet Mr. Lynne on his return from the daily supervision of the planting of a peach orchard of choice variety.
“I’ll race you,” Ronny challenged. She started her horse, Lightning, with a quick pat of her hand on his silky neck. He shot forward like a veritable streak of lightning, glad of a chance to run.