SURPRISING THINGS HAPPEN.
It was Autumn once more. The children with their parents had returned to
inland homes and the garden no longer echoed with their shouts and
laughter.
Mrs. Welton had told Nan that the winter tourists from the snowy East
would arrive in January and that she would re-engage her at that time if
she cared to continue her little class, which the eager girl gladly
consented to do. The remuneration had been excellent, and, during the
intervening months, Nan planned keeping happily busy with sewing and
home-making.
The garden was again glowing with yellow chrysanthemums as it had been on
that long ago day when the gypsy girl and the little lad Tirol had first
found the beach gate and the home which Nan had little dreamed was to be
her own.
During the summer there had been many letters from Phyllis who was
traveling abroad and from Robert Widdemere. Upon leaving the military
academy, the lad's first desire had been to cross the continent at once,
but, when he found many tasks waiting in his father's office, he believed
that he ought not to start on a pleasure trip until these had been in
some measure accomplished and it was November before he decided that he
could start on the long planned journey. When he told his mother of his
decision, she announced that she intended accompanying him and remaining
during the winter at their San Seritos home.
This was a keen disappointment to the lad, who believed that his mother
merely wished to try to prevent, if she could, his friendship with Nan
Barrington, but Robert was too fine a lad to be discourteous, and so, on
a blustery day, they left the East, and, in less than a week, they
arrived in the garden village of San Seritos that was basking in the
sunshine under a blue cloudless sky.
An hour later, Robert leaped over the little gate in the hedge and raced
like a schoolboy across the wide velvety lawns of the Barrington estate.
He saw Nan and dear Miss Dahlia in the garden. At his joyous shout, they
both looked up and beheld approaching them a tall lad who was jubilantly
waving his cap.
"It's Robert Widdemere!" Nan said, and then, as he came up and greeted
them, she added, "But only yesterday I had a letter from you and in it
you said nothing about coming."
"I wanted to surprise you, Lady Red Bird," the lad exclaimed. "Isn't it
grand and glorious, Nan, to be once more in this wonderful country. I
wish we could start right now for a ride up the mountains."
"I couldn't go today," the gypsy girl laughingly told him, "for I have
something baking in the oven and it cannot be left."
"I could tend to it," Miss Dahlia said, but Nan shook her head.
"It's a surprise for tomorrow," she merrily declared, "and I don't want
even you, Aunt Dahlia, to know what it is."
Then turning happy eyes toward the lad, she said, "Think of it, Robert
Widdemere, tomorrow will be Thanksgiving day and five years since you and
I rode to the mountain top."
"Nan, comrade," the boy said eagerly, "let's take that ride again
tomorrow, dressed gypsy-wise as we were before, shall we?"
"As you wish, Robert Widdemere," Nan laughingly replied. "Thanksgiving
seems to be a fateful day for us."
A happy hour the young people spent together. Robert wished to hear all
that happened and when Nan protested that she had written every least
little thing, he declared that it had all been so interesting, it would
bear repeating.
Suddenly the girl sprang up, holding out both hands as she exclaimed,
"Robert, I shall have to ask you to come at some other time. I must look
after that something which is baking for tomorrow." The lad caught the
hands as he said, "Good-bye, then, I'll reappear at about ten."