Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/369

Rh "Nothing but you, Dad, to give me away."

"And of course no presents. Well that relieves my mind, anyway. At what time do you want me to show up, and where? I've got some manure to put on the apricots to-morrow, and I don't want to waste any more time than I have to."

"Then you don't object?"

"Object? Why should I? That's yours and Kenneth's business, not mine," paraphrased Brainerd.

"You are a dear! a gem of a father! You always do understand!" cried Daphne, casting herself upon him. "She used to do this when she was a child," Brainerd explained to Kenneth over her shoulder, "and she doesn't know that she has grown. She hits you with all the lightsome abandon of a three-ton steam roller. And I'm hanged if I understand! But what matters that? Do I gather this is what you might call a secret, a clandestine wedding? Nobody to know? Not even the Colonel? It will break the Colonel's heart not to be at your wedding, Daffy."

"Oh, particularly not the Colonel!" cried Daphne. "That is part of it!"

"I see," returned Brainerd, gratefully. "Thank you for your explanation. It makes everything perfectly clear. But there's one thing I wish you'd done."

"What is that?"

"Why in blazes, if there's all this secrecy, didn't you elope? Then I'd have been able to manure my apricots."

husband and father, by her insistence, dropped her at the Avenue of Palms and drove on to the Bungalow. She looked after them a moment, and then walked slowly and thoughtfully up the long rise that led to Corona del Monte. She found the Colonel seated on the top step of the veranda, his hat beside him, looking up rather vaguely into the tops of his great oaks. At sight of her he arose with his customary old-fashioned courtesy.

"Well, Puss!" he cried, "but this is a pleasure!"