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“Within twenty-four hours he had told her of his love and asked her to marry him. Then—I tried to convince you thieves could be honest—she was brave enough to tell him what she was. He was a true knight and lover. Her confession didn’t alter his feelings or his intentions; in fact, his determination to marry her was strengthened. Because she loved him very much, she ran away from him, leaving him in a strange city without even her name for a clue. But now she had a hope, a real incentive—the biggest one there is. She pawned all the coveted clothes she had bought and went to a place far away where she could begin a new life—the life of an honest working-girl.

“In her little game with destiny, she lost out, and was apprehended for a theft of which she was entirely innocent, but her past record barred acquittal. A man was instrumental in gaining a reprieve for her, however, and she was sent away to new environment where she found friends, health and, best of all, a job.

“So the desire was born in her to turn the proverbial new leaf, not for the sake of winning her ‘man,’ but from the simple wish to be ‘good.’ I interested Mrs. Kingdon in her and told her where she was, but did not dream of such good luck for—Bobbie as to be sent up here. I know she will find happiness up here in these hills. You’ll be kind to the little girl, won’t you?” she pleaded. “You know you haven’t much mercy for sinners, but you will see she is serious about reforming; not flippant like me. She will never yield to temptation again.”

“How do you know?” he asked, looking at her keenly.

“Because,” she answered softly. “She loves, and—the man she loves is worthy of her.”

“And you think love is powerful enough to cure?”

“I think so.”

“Would it cure—you?”

“I don’t know,” she said ingenuously. “You see I have never loved.”

A fervid light smouldered in his eyes.

“Aunty Pen!”

Francis came running around the curve.

“There is a nice girl at the house. Mother sent her. She’s got a boy’s name—Bobbie. I like her. She does anything I tell her to.”

“That’s the masculine measure,” she said, taking his hand and running on with him.

“Come back!” was the strident summons from Kurt.

“Stay here a moment,” Pen hurriedly bade Francis.

“I want to ask you how this girl is able to have such expensive looking things—if she has only a job?”

“They were given to her.”

“By the man who was instrumental in getting her reprieved? You said she was virtuous.”

“Don’t do the man an injustice, even if you doubt poor little Bobbie. He acted from charitable motives. He has never seen her, or tried to see her.”

“Look at me, Pen!”

“I’m looking. You have the true Western eye—the eye of a sharpshooter and a—sheriff.”

“The story you just told me is the story of Marta Sills. Is that her name or yours?”

“It belongs to us both. Being ‘particular pals,’ we shared alike. Interchange of names often comes handy with us.”

“Was it you or Bobbie Burr—the girl who just came—whom Jo met in a dance hall, and took to St.—some place on Lake Michigan?”

“Dear me! You cattlemen are such gay birds when you come to a city! How can I tell how many girls Jo Gary took to a dance hall? If that St. Something was St. Joe, he must have gone there to get married. It’s what most people go there for, and probably he’s no more saintly than the place is. Maybe it was named after him.”

“Tell me! Was it Bobbie Burr?”

“She never mentioned Jo Gary’s name to me, so how do I know. Yes, Francis; coming.”

She ran fleetly on to join the boy who was impatiently calling to her.

“Marta! How the plot does thicken!” she thought as she ran a race with Francis to the house. “Now we’re all here but Hebby. What next? Curtain soon, I expect. No need longer for understudies. I must start things before Kurt succumbs to her charms. That little subdued, clinging-vine air she has is most appealing to his type. He’ll come to forgive her anything.”

“Marta,” she said quickly, as she met the young girl, “come upstairs with me.”

She locked the door as soon as they were in her room.

“Now tell me all about yourself and everything that has happened since I last saw you.”

Beaming with the excitement that comes from narrative of self, the newcomer talked animatedly for some time.

“And,” she concluded, “Mrs. Kingdon said you told her all about me, and she sent me a ticket to come here. And it’s lovely up here, isn’t it? She told me I’d better keep to the name of Bobbie Burr for the present, until she came anyway.”

“I should say!” agreed Pen. “Marta Sills might land you in most unpleasant places. But, Marta, that man you told me about, whose name you didn’t mention?”

“Yes, Miss Lamont. I try not to think of him.”

“Marta, why did you tell him that you stole. You could have married him. He’d never have known. And you and he could both have been happy.”

In the girl’s wondering eyes, Pen read a mute rebuke.

“I’d rather lose him forever than deceive him!”

“Marta,” said Pen impressively, “Diogenes should have known you.”

“Who is he, Miss Lamont?”

“Never mind, Marta. I thought I knew what love meant, but I see I didn’t until now. If I loved a man as you do yours, I would stop stealing if I had to cut my hands off to do it.”

“I have stopped. I know now that I could have stopped long ago, if any one had given me the right boost, or made me want to stop.”

Just then Pen’s eyes caught sight of a trunk in the corner of her room.

“What’s that here for?” she asked.

“Oh, please, Miss Lamont, I brought it to you. I never touched anything in it. I earned enough to buy what I am wearing and a few things in my suitcase, besides what I had on that day—”

“Marta, that’s sweet in you. I am beginning to feel I’d like to tog once more. I shall reward you. But first, will you do something for me?”

“You know I will be glad to do anything.”

“I want a note delivered. I’ll write it now.”

Hastily she wrote a few lines at her desk.

“Come with me, Marta. We’ll have to go to a certain vine-clad pergola by devious routes to avoid three wise children and one suspicious and formidable foreman.”

By much circumambulation the two girls reached the pergola unseen.

“You sit here for a few moments, Marta, and the person to whom you are to give the note will come to you.”

Pen walked on to the barracks where she met Jo.

“Will you do something for me, Jo? Right away, quick?”

“Sure thing, Miss Penny Ante. What did his nibs want?”

“Never mind, now. Go to the pergola and receive a note from me. Now don’t be stupid. Do as you are told,—like a good soldier does.”

With a laugh Jo started in swinging gait for the place indicated, but he was halted several times by some of the men who wanted directions for their work.

After waiting patiently, Marta concluded Pen’s plans had miscarried, so she started for the house, but becoming confused as to turns, she went toward the barracks.

To a little girl whose life had been spent in slums and reformatories, the big spaces and silences were more appalling than the wildest hours of traffic on misguided State Street. She had a strange inclination to walk down hill backward that she might not see what other ascension must be made.

“If I’d only been born as high up as this, maybe I’d never have got down so low,” she philosophized.

She came around a bend in the road. A man was approaching. He looked up.

“Marta, oh, Marta!”

“Jo!” she cried wildly, looking about for retreat.

Another second, in his arms, she thought no longer of flight.

“Marta, how did you ever get here?” Wild astonishment was visible in Jo’s eyes.

“Mrs. Kingdon sent for me. I’ve been killed with kindness ever since that night I saw you, Jo. I didn’t know you were here. Miss Lamont told me to stay in that place where the vines are until a man came, and to give him this note; but that was long ago. I came out and lost my way. Are you the man she meant?”

“I must be.”

“Does she know that you—that we—”

“Sure she knows. Give me the note.”

He removed the little folded paper from the envelope and read it aloud:

“DEAR JO: Here is your heart-ease. Don’t let doubt kill your love. Just take Marta. A woman loves an audacious lover.

“Yours,

“PENNY ANTE.”

“I feel sort of crazy. Gee, Marta, but it’s great to be crazy! Let’s sit down here and talk about it. You don’t need to tell me much. She told me. Why didn’t you let me hear from you?”

“I wanted to be sure, Jo. I’m not going to make excuses for myself, but I had it handed to me hard. Whenever I thought I’d like to be like other folks, some one would give me a shoveback, and then I felt cornered and that it was no use. Sometimes—most always—I was down and out. Then I’d hit a little lucky wave and go up. It was one of those times I saw you in that dance hall.”

“That was my lucky wave. I can see you now as you sat away from the rest—so little and so different-looking from those tough ones.”

“And I can see you—alone, by yourself; you looked different from anyone I’d ever seen, so healthy and jolly and kind. I saw you looking at me and knew right off what you thought—that I was straight and had got in the wrong place by mistake. And I let you think so and let you get to know me. And we danced and talked till near sunrise. That lovely day over at St. Joe! I thought I was in Heaven until we were in that little park and you asked me to marry you. First time a real man ever asked me that. I wasn’t low enough to fool you then. When you said it made no difference, I knew you were too good for me, and it made me love you so much that I had to run away.”

“It was sure great in you to tell me, Marta.”

“You know how I got help and hope; but I’m not Marta now, Jo. Not any more. I’m Bobbie Burr.”

“You’ll always be Marta. But it makes no difference; you’ll soon be changing your name for keeps. You can’t ever lose me, now, and love has Mrs. Kingdon and all the rest of them beat for what you call reforming.”

“If I had only known long ago that there were folks like you and Mrs. Kingdon and—”

“Never mind long ago. There’s nothing to it. Let’s talk about the little shack we are going to put up in these hills somewhere. Like it?”

“It seems like a beautiful dream up here, Jo. Too good for me.”

He looked down into the kitten face with its eyes of Irish blue.

“Nothing in the world is too good for you, my Marta.”

“Miss Lamont said I could play I had died and been born again. She said it was a good way to turn over a new leaf.”

“You will be born again as Mrs. Jo Gary.”

Time went very swiftly then, and it was Marta who realized Pen might be expecting to see her.

“Please start me in the right direction, Jo.”

“I’ll take you to the house myself,” said Jo protectingly.

As they came around a curve in the road that wound its way upward and downward, they encountered Kurt.

“This is Miss Sills, Mr. Walters,” introduced Jo proudly—“the little girl I told you about when I came from Chicago. We are engaged.”

She looked up a little fearfully at the stern-looking young foreman. She was surprised and relieved at the kindly look in the steel-gray eyes. He took one of her little hands in his strong brown ones. He was ashamed that his instinct told him it was the typical hand of a thief, slim, smooth and deft-fingered.

“Let me congratulate you, Jo, and you, too, Marta. Jo is my friend.”

Tears came into her eyes and her little mouth puckered pathetically.

“Say, Kurt, you’re a brick!” exclaimed Jo heartily. “I was afraid—you know you said—”

He stopped in confusion.

“Forget everything I said, old man. I was a grouch then and I didn’t know—anything. I know better now. But Marta, why did you tell me your name was Bobbie Burr.”

“Mrs. Kingdon told me to use that name until—”

“Until she has her right name, Marta Gary,” finished Jo.

Kurt smiled condoningly.

“Mrs. Kingdon always knows what is best.”

“That is what Miss Lamont said. She said that with Jo to love me and Mrs. Kingdon to advise me I couldn’t help but be—what I want to be.”

“Did she say that?” he asked eagerly, a light in his eyes. “She was right.”

“She left out her help. It was Jo that first made me want to be straight, but it was Miss Lamont who gave me the chance. Isn’t she grand, Mr. Walters? She has such a kind heart.”

“Will you tell me something about her, Marta? Is—”

He stopped abruptly. It wouldn’t be just the right thing to cross-examine this little girl about her “particular pal.”

“I’ll see you again, soon,” he said, and went on to the garage.

The sound of Jo’s jolly laugh with the little added tender note made him turn and look after them. They had stopped on their way and were looking into each other’s eyes, oblivious to all else but the happiness to be found in the kingdom of love and youth.

Silhouetted on the crest of the hill they stood—Jo, lean, long and picturesque in his rough clothes; Marta, neat and natty from her little pumps to her shining yellow hair smoothed back over her forehead.

With the feeling that he also was initiated into the Great Brotherhood and had recognized the tokens of membership, he went about his tasks, seeing a vision of a girl with a sweetness in her eyes that often belied the bantering of her tone.

When he came up to dinner, Pen’s place was vacant.

“Bobbie won’t eat with us,” explained Francis. “Nora didn’t, you know. Aunt Pen thought she might be lonesome eating her first meal all alone, so they are having their dinner together.”

Marta’s words, “she has such a kind heart,” came back to him.

“She is right,” he said. “Marta knows.”

And suddenly there was born in him a deep compassion for all women of her kind. In vain he waited for Pen in the library that night. But, feeling she was in deep waters, Pen had resolved to stay in her room.

* * *

* * *

CHAPTER XI

Outside her door Pen found Betty waiting expectantly.

“Bobbie gave us a nickel apiece not to disturb you,” she began glibly. “She said you had a headache last night. And father’s come home and brought a man with him. And mother’s coming soon.”

Pen found herself only languidly interested in these announcements. She listened distraitly to the prattle of the children who surrounded her while she was served with toast and coffee.

“Father and the man are motoring around the ranch,” said Francis, “but they will be back to lunch.”

This roused her to the extent of making a more elaborate toilet than usual. She came into the library shortly before the luncheon hour, clad in one of the gowns she had taken from the trunk Marta had brought, her hair done with exquisite care.

“Why, Aunty Pen!” cried Betty. “You look so different. You look grown up.”

“I am, Betty,” she said gravely.

“Miss Pen!” exclaimed Kingdon, coming forward. “Our hills have gotten in their curative powers speedily. I was afraid you were of the lily family, but I see you are a bud of the rose.”