Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/241

Rh trations. The Fremont was a very perfect machine for comfortable living while away from home: it was no longer a home itself.

For the Colonel never visited the hotel any more. He felt as though he had lost a whole piece out of the close-knit structure of his life; as, indeed, he had. Nobody but Allie knew how deeply he felt his loss. Some of his old friends may have guessed, but only from the fact that he so consistently absented himself. To the world in general he presented a jovial face.

"What business has a ranchman with hotels!" he cried with a laugh. "I'm getting along toward being an old man; and why I should bother myself with a lot of business I don't need to do in the least I'm sure I don't know!"

This was the attitude he consistently maintained. The new generation of tourists knew him not, except as a fine old figure driving or walking by, with a charming old-fashioned way of bowing to every stranger who passed within ten feet of him. Occasionally he gave a picnic at the ranch to which he invited some of his old hotel friends, with a request that they bring along whom they pleased. In this fashion he was still known to a select few of the winter tourists, who loved to exclaim over his picturesqueness and the romance of his old-time ranch; to the great disgust and envy of those not favoured. These were, compared to the old barbecues, simple picnics. They had not the wide, lavish, splendid picturesqueness of the barbecue; but they were charming, and their hospitality was dispensed in memorable fashion by the Colonel and his wife. The latter was always assisted by a tall, grave-eyed dark girl of seventeen, who moved with that complete command of her body that makes grace; and a curly haired, laughing-eyed, bronzed young man in his twenties, who had many small jokes for everybody, and who kept things going in a lively fashion. The old barbecues had been discontinued completely. This was at Allie's insistence. The Colonel yielded reluctantly, for they had always been her especial festival. But they had to be one of the first economies; and Allie had set down some appalling figures as to their cost, figures in which the Colonel had no belief whatever.

In other small respects, too, the ranch gave evidence, to the