"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."
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.