one day, and wondered why he did
not act more pleased when he walked down toward the corral and discovered
his airplane all repaired, just exactly as good as it had been before. He
stood there looking at it with the same apathetic gloom in his bearing
that had marked him ever since he was able to be out of bed. Mary V
thought he might at least show a little gratitude--not to herself, but
toward her dad, because he had kept Bland and had paid him to repair
the machine for Johnny, when Johnny was too sick to know anything about
it--too sick even to hear the noise of it when Bland tried out the
motor--and the nurse was so afraid it would disturb "her patient."

She saw her dad stroll down that way, and stop and look at the airplane
with Johnny. Johnny seemed to be asking a few questions. But they did
not talk five minutes until Johnny went off by himself to the bunk house,
and stayed there. He did not even come back to the house for supper, but
ate with the boys.

Mary V would have died before she would ask Johnny what was the matter,
but she took what measures she could to find out, nevertheless. She asked
her dad, that evening, what Johnny thought about his aeroplane being all
fixed up again.

Sudden smoked for a minute or two before he answered. "Well, I don't
know, kitten. He didn't say." Sudden's tone was drawling and comfortable,
but Mary V somehow got the notion that her dad, too, was rather
disappointed in Johnny's lack of appreciation.

"Well, but what's he going to do with it, dad?"

"He didn't say, kitten."

"Well, but dad, he was looking at it, and you were with him, and didn't
he say _anything_, for gracious sake?" Mary V could not have kept the
exasperation out of her voice if she had tried.

Sudden's lips quirked with the beginning of a smile. He looked at the end
of his cigar, looked toward the bunk house, scraped off the cigar's ash
collar on the porch rail, looked at Mary V.

"Well, he asked me how it got here to the ranch, and I told him with a
wagon and team and so on. And he said, 'Mh-hum, I see.' Then he asked me
who repaired it, and I told him that buttermilk-eyed aviator he'd had
with him. He replied, 'I--see.' Then he asked me what the repairing had
cost, and the fellow's wages or whatever he had got, and I told him,
'Dam-fi recollect, Johnny.' And he didn't say a word. Just strolled off
as if he'd talked himself tired--which I guess maybe he had."

"Well, but dad, what do you _suppose_