"Thank you; I'm all right," returned Carley.

At the doorway they encountered a girl of lithe and robust figure, quick

in her movements. Carley was swift to see the youth and grace of her;

and then a face that struck Carley as neither pretty nor beautiful, but

still wonderfully attractive.

"Flo, here's Miss Burch," burst out Mrs. Hutter, with cheerful

importance. "Glenn Kilbourne's girl come all the way from New York to

surprise him!"

"Oh, Carley, I'm shore happy to meet you!" said the girl, in a voice of

slow drawling richness. "I know you. Glenn has told me all about you."

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If this greeting, sweet and warm as it seemed, was a shock to Carley,

she gave no sign. But as she murmured something in reply she looked with

all a woman's keenness into the face before her. Flo Hutter had a fair

skin generously freckled; a mouth and chin too firmly cut to suggest

a softer feminine beauty; and eyes of clear light hazel, penetrating,

frank, fearless. Her hair was very abundant, almost silver-gold in

color, and it was either rebellious or showed lack of care. Carley

liked the girl's looks and liked the sincerity of her greeting;

but instinctively she reacted antagonistically because of the frank

suggestion of intimacy with Glenn.

But for that she would have been spontaneous and friendly rather than

restrained.

They ushered Carley into a big living room and up to a fire of blazing

logs, where they helped divest her of the wet wraps. And all the time

they talked in the solicitous way natural to women who were kind and

unused to many visitors. Then Mrs. Hutter bustled off to make a cup of

hot coffee while Flo talked.

"We'll shore give you the nicest room--with a sleeping porch right under

the cliff where the water falls. It'll sing you to sleep. Of course you

needn't use the bed outdoors until it's warmer. Spring is late here, you

know, and we'll have nasty weather yet. You really happened on Oak Creek

at its least attractive season. But then it's always--well, just Oak

Creek. You'll come to know."

"I dare say I'll remember my first sight of it and the ride down that

cliff road," said Carley, with a wan smile.

"Oh, that's nothing to what you'll see and do," returned Flo, knowingly.

"We've had Eastern tenderfeet here before. And never was there a one of

them who didn't come to love Arizona."

"Tenderfoot! It hadn't occurred to me. But of course--" murmured Carley.




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