Penny of Top Hill Trail Part 11

"That is good news. Of course Jo hasn't Kurt's efficiency, but he gets on well with the men."

"They say," remarked Francis sagely, "that Jo is always 'right there.'"

"So is Uncle Kurt!" exclaimed Betty indignantly.

"You don't get me, Betty," said her brother loftily, "but it's no use explaining to a girl."

Pen had been a most attentive and eager listener to this conversation.

"I am sorry I didn't know Kurt was going to town," said Mrs. Kingdon to Pen, "for we could have sent him for some things for you."

"What kind of things?" asked Betty curiously.

"I came without my luggage," explained Pen glibly, "but I can trim out clothes as easily as I can animals, and if you have any stray pieces of cloth I can very quickly duplicate what I am now wearing."

"We have quant.i.ties of material," said Mrs. Kingdon. "I seem to have a mania for buying it, and there my interest in new garments ceases. Agatha is a fine seamstress, so we'll have you outfitted in no time."

"Wouldn't you like to motor over the place, Miss Pen?" invited Kingdon as they rose from the table. Smiling understandingly at her look of alarm, he added: "I don't mean in the car Kurt brought you up in yesterday."

"Uncle Kurt made it all himself--out of parts he bought," boasted Francis.

"Dear me!" said Pen ruefully. "I wish he hadn't bought so many parts, or else left some of them out."

"It's a fine car!" declared Francis in tone of rebuke.

"I like it better than ours," said Billy. "We helped make it."

"I throw up my hands," said Kingdon. "Only the loyalty of a child would have the courage to defend such a car."

In a long, luxurious limousine the entire family made the rounds of the ranch to show Pen the squadrons of cattle browsing by the creek, thoroughbred horses inclosed in a pasture of many miles, the smaller-s.p.a.ced farmyard, the buildings, bunk-houses and "Kurt's Kabin," as a facetious cowboy had labeled the office where the foreman made out the pay rolls and transacted the business affairs of the ranch.

"I think you have seen it all, now," said Kingdon, as he turned the car into the driveway that led homeward.

"Oh, no!" cried Billy. "She hasn't seen Jo yet. There he is at the mess house."

"Of course, you must see Jo, Miss Pen," said Kingdon. "I'll drop you and the kiddies here and you can call on him. I have an idea he will be more Jo-like if my wife and I are not present."

The car stopped near a long low building, and Pen with the children got out of the car.

"Jo-o-o!" chorused the trio.

From the house came Jo, whom the men had nicknamed the "human spider," for his arms and legs were the thinnest of his species. He was saved from being grotesque, however, by a certain care-free grace, a litheness of movement. He had greenish-blue eyes that were set far apart and crinkled when they laughed--as ever and oft they did. His features were irregular, his hair unruly, but there was a lovable appeal in the roguish eyes and the charm of humor in a mouth that lifted upward at the corners.

"Halloa, kindergarten!" he called in a jovial tenor. "Who's your little old sister?"

"She isn't our sister," denied Francis with dignified mien. "She's a young lady."

"Honest?" he asked in amused tone, looking down at the girl whose eyes were hidden by long-lashed, down-turned lids. "How young now?"

Then his dancing eyes grew suddenly quiet and amazed, as her lashes lifted. He read a warning in her glance.

"Jo," she said gravely and meaningly, "I am _Penelope Lamont_, and I am a young lady--out of my teens."

"'Scuse," he answered seriously, "but you don't dress it."

"She's got on Doris's clothes," explained Betty, "'cause she didn't bring any of her own, and she's our Aunty Penny."

"No," he said solemnly. "No, she ain't! You've got it wrong side to. Her name is Penny Ante."

"It isn't either!" cried Betty angrily, with a stamp of her little foot.

"Uncle Kurt brought her here. She's his company, so you'd better look out, Jo Gary!" warned Billy.

Jo made a mock gesture of alarm and shielded his face with his arm as if from an imaginary blow.

"Now, why didn't you say so in the first place! My, ain't it the luck for me that he won't be sheriff when he comes back! He might have had me put in the lock-up."

"I am not Mr. Walters' company--not now," explained Pen. "I came up here with him, to be sure, but Mrs. Kingdon has asked me to be her company until I am well. I have been ill."

"Double 'scuse. And this is the best place in the world to get well. Some little old ranch, and Kurt Walters is some foreman."

"Aren't you foreman now?"

"When Kurt is here, I'm nothing but a cow-hand; when he is away, I'm only acting foreman. I'll never be anything but just acting-something, I guess."

"Kurt Walters was only acting sheriff."

"That's so. We seem to be mostly actingers or actorines," he allowed.

"Say!" turning ferociously to Francis, "what business has a boy looking like an owl? Loosen up, and have some pep!"

The boy's fair face flushed.

"It's none of your business how I look, Jo Gary!"

"Wow! Now you're talking. We can't fight before a lady, though."

"Cook says you look like a wishbone, Jo," taunted Billy, coming to his brother's defense.

"She did, did she? Well, the cook can hang me over her door, and then--I'll kiss her."

"I'll tell her, and she won't dance with you to-night."

"If you do," threatened Jo, "I won't tell you where there are four little, new kittens what haven't got their peepers opened yet."

"Oh, where, Jo? We'll not tell her. Please, Jo!" pleaded Betty.

"I choose to name them," said Francis. "Tell, Jo."