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If she did not hear from Chrystie by midday she would call him up at his office and ask him to come to her. She seemed to have found in the thought of him not only a staff to uphold, but wisdom to guide. She drew the curtains and saw the first thin glimmering of dawn, pearl-faint in the sky, pearl-pale on the garden.
"It'll be the last time you'll see them for a long while, I guess." Chrystie, suddenly pensive, dropped back in the chair. "Um, it will. Before we see Pancha again it may be years. She's going abroad to study. But she's promised to write and tell us all about how she's getting on. And when she comes back a real grand opera singer won't I be in a state! I get all wrought up now thinking about it.
Among them at first unnoticed by his vaguely roving glance were three he knew the two Alston girls and Aunt Ellen. It was always hot and stuffy in the Albion and Aunt Ellen had been uncomfortable and fussed about it, and Chrystie was disappointed that her favorite had not been able to make the performance a success.
It was unfortunate that while she was making holes in her trunk to pack it, Lorry should have come in and seen more than half of it stacked on the bureau. That necessitated more lies, and Chrystie told them with desperation. It was to pay people, of course, milliners and dressmakers she owed a lot, and as she was passing the bank she'd drawn it in a lump.
"That's merciful," Aunt Ellen announced in a sleepy voice. Chrystie, finding no more delicious shudders in the subject, twirled round on the stool and began softly picking out notes on the piano. For a space Mark and Lorry talked it was about the ranch near the tules rather dull as it came to Chrystie through her picking.
Aunt Ellen, creaking in her new silks, toiled up the stairs, an old, shaky hand on the balustrade. "Come up, girls," she quavered; "you must be dead tired." "Well," breathed Lorry with questioning eyes on her sister, "how was it?" Chrystie jumped at her and folded her in a rapturous embrace. "Oh, it was maddening, blissful, rip-roarious!
In the little shack where the Despatch was getting out its first paper, full of advertisements for the lost and offers of shelter to the outcast, he turned up at midday. He saw Crowder there, told him the situation, and left with him an advertisement "for any news of Chrystie Alston." Late afternoon saw him back on the edges of the Mission Hills.
This was very becoming and in sweeping draperies some of the evening dresses made over into tea gowns she was an attractive figure, her charms enhanced by a softening delicacy. The dark episode of her disappearance was allowed to rest in silence. She and Lorry had threshed it out as far as Lorry thought fit. That Boye Mayer had dropped out of sight was all Chrystie knew.
"Aunt Ellen's been so excited about that story, she couldn't talk of anything else." "And why not?" said Aunt Ellen. "It's a very unusual performance. Two sets of thieves, one stealing the money and burying it and another coming along and finding it." Chrystie, diverted from her private worries by this exciting subject, bounced round toward Mark with something of her old explosiveness.
"Here comes the bus," called someone. "Grace, Carrie, where are you?" "Where are the Monrovia girls? Oh, Vera, you are wanted." "Chrystie, your turn next. Is this your grip? Good-by all! Merry Christmas!" With a few final, hasty hugs, the quartette sprang down the steps, climbed into the waiting vehicles, and departed to all appearances amid a great waving of handkerchiefs and pennants.
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