Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/313

Rh "Oh, Ken! Ken!" she cried, brokenly. "It's so good to be back! So good to be back!"

"Sweetheart," he murmured.

She drew back to look at him, pushing herself away with both hands against his chest, her expression astonished and a little awed.

"Why, why Ken!" she gasped. "It is that; isn't it?"

"Of course," he soothed, drawing her back to him. "Haven't you known? I have, for weeks."

"Oh Ken," she said after a little, "we ought to be ashamed to be so happy just now. Think! Oh, we must try to be so good to the poor old Colonel!"

Thus brought back to the present problem, they sat down on the lowermost sweeping limb of Dolman's House to talk more soberly.

"Now as to my father's supposed part in all this," said Kenneth, "I don't believe it for moment. He is a business man accustomed to talking plain business, and he has been misunderstood. Probably he has some scheme of buying part of the ranch and turning it into farms, though he's never said anything to me about it. You know he's always had the small farm idea. Naturally he would suppose the Colonel would want to go in for it. But as for his plotting to do up the old man," Kenneth laughed, "why you don't know my father, that's all."

Daphne snuggled closer. There were any amount of loose ends, but they seemed unimportant. However, Kenneth proceeded to gather one of them up.

"Father's in Los Angeles," he went on. "Just as soon as he gets back I'll tell him about it." He paused, considering. "You don't suppose the Colonel would feel differently about it—now?" he suggested.

"Why should he?"

"Well—Aunt Allie—it may seem different to him now. Perhaps he'd like to get rid of the worry And of course we don't know all the ins and outs of the matter, do we? Certainly the situation can't change before the mortgages become due. Suppose I find out when that is: I can easily do it. Then it might be a good idea to let things alone for a little while until the Colo-