f
you want to see father, you'd better hurry up."

With a sudden determination as new to him as it was incomprehensible,
Reddy turned from her and struck forward in the direction of the hill.
He was not quite sure what he was going for. Yet that he, who had only
a moment before fully determined to leave the rancho and her, was now
going to her father to demand her hand as a contingency of his remaining
did not strike him as so extravagant and unexpected a denouement as
it was a difficult one. He was only concerned HOW, and in what way, he
should approach him. In a moment of embarrassment he hesitated, turned,
and looked behind him.

She was standing where he had left her, gazing after him, leaning
forward with her hands still held behind her. Suddenly, as with an
inspiration, she raised them both, carried them impetuously to her lips,
blew him a dozen riotous kisses, and then, lowering her head like a
colt, whisked her skirt behind her, and vanished in the cover.

III.

It was only May, but the freshness of early summer already clothed
the great fields of the rancho. The old resemblance to a sea was still
there, more accented, perhaps, by the undulations of bluish-green
grain that rolled from the actual shore-line to the foothills. The farm
buildings were half submerged in this glowing tide of color and lost
their uncouth angularity with their hidden rude foundations. The same
sea-breeze blew chilly and steadily from the bay, yet softened and
subdued by the fresh odors of leaf and flower. The outlying fringe of
oaks were starred through their underbrush with anemones and dog-roses;
there were lupines growing rankly in the open spaces, and along the
gentle slopes of Oak Grove daisies were already scattered. And, as if it
were part of this vernal efflorescence, the eminence itself was crowned
with that latest flower of progress and improvement,--the new Oak Grove
Hotel!

Long, low, dazzling with white colonnades, verandas, and balconies which
retained, however, enough of the dampness of recent creation to make
them too cool for loungers, except at high noon, the hotel nevertheless
had the charms of freshness, youth, and cleanliness. Reddy's fastidious
neatness showed itself in all the appointments, from the mirrored and
marbled barroom, gilded parlors, and snowy dining-room, to the chintz
and maple furnishing of the bedrooms above. Reddy's taste, too, had
selected the pretty site; his good fortune had afterward