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More than anything else, the thing that struck against Randy's heart was this lack of fear in Becky! Of course it was Dalton who took Becky home. There had been a sharp summons to Kemp, who came running up with raincoats, a rush for the car, a hurried "Won't you come with us, Randy?" from Becky, and Randy's curt refusal, and then the final insult from Dalton.
"Well, get one then," snapped Mr. Wells. "You mean for Becky?" Mary Rose could scarcely believe her two small ears. "I'll be glad to." She regarded him with an admiration that should have made him feel enveloped in a soft warm mantle. "I'll tell her it's a present from a kind gentleman who wants to be her friend. Sometime I'll take you to see her. What shall we name her bird?
Then, raising his eyes and looking at her squarely, he said what he had come to say; "I have I have just been to see Dalton, Becky." A wave of red washed over her neck, touched her chin, her cheeks. "I don't see what that has to do with me." "It has a great deal to do with you. I told him you were going to marry me." The wave receded. She was chalk-white. "Randy, how dared you do such a thing?"
Becky, from the moment of her aunt's arrival, had known that something was wrong. She had expected to see Mrs. Beaufort glowing with renewed youth, radiant. Instead, she looked as if a blight had come upon her, shrivelled old. When she smiled it was without joy; she was dull and flat. It was a half hour before Aunt Claudia came out from the library.
Her red-gold hair was thick and she wore it bobbed. Her skin was white but lacked the look of delicacy which seemed to contradict constantly Cope's vivid personality. She seemed to laugh at the world as he did. She called Becky "quaint," but took to her at once. "Archie has been writing to me of you," she told Becky; "he says you came up like a bird from the south."
He swore by all the gods that when he had to part with his bays and ride behind gasoline, he would be ready to die. Becky agreed with her grandfather. She adored the old traditions, and she adored the Judge. She spent two months of every year with him in his square brick house in Albemarle surrounded by unprofitable acres.
Becky changed her habits with her situation in life the rouge-pot was suspended another excitement to which she had accustomed herself was also put aside, or at least only indulged in in privacy, as when she was prevailed on by Jos of a summer evening, Emmy and the boy being absent on their walks, to take a little spirit-and-water.
"I'm going to make a nice little pudding for you; your mother said you liked 'em; or would you rather have whipped cream with a mite of jelly in it?" asked Becky, anxious to suit her new boarder. "Whichever is easiest to make. I don't care what I eat. Do tell me what you were saying.
They all said they had not noticed whether Tom and Becky were on board the ferryboat on the homeward trip; it was dark; no one thought of inquiring if any one was missing. One young man finally blurted out his fear that they were still in the cave! Mrs. Thatcher swooned away. Aunt Polly fell to crying and wringing her hands.
The old man wrinkled his brow. He had not thought of Becky Adams for years; at best the woman had been but a landmark, and landmarks had a habit of disappearing. "No, there ain't no reason for folks to live on Thunder Peak. It's a right sorry place for living." Jed found comfort, now he came to think of it, in knowing that Becky had departed.
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