King swallowed hard and glared from dad to me, and then at Beryl, who had come up and laid my arm over her shoulder—­where it was perfectly satisfied to stay.  There was a half-minute when I didn’t know whether King would shoot somebody, or have apoplexy.

“You’re late, father,” said Beryl sweetly, displaying that blessed certificate rather conspicuously.  “If you had only hurried a little, you might have been in time for the we-wedding.”

I squeezed my arm tight in approval, and came near choking her.  King gasped as if somebody had an arm around his neck, too, and was squeezing.

“Oh, well, you’re here now, and it’s all right,” put in dad easily, as though everything was quite commonplace and had happened dozens of times to us.  “Crom will have dinner ready soon, though as he and Tony weren’t notified that there would be a wedding-party here, I can’t promise the feast I’d like to.  Still, there’s a bottle or two good enough to drink even their happiness in, Homer.  Just send your chauffeur down to the town, and come in.” (Good one on Weaver, that—­and, the best part of it was, he heard it.)

King hesitated while I could count ten—­if I I counted fast enough—­and came in, following us all back through the vestibule.  Inside, he looked me over and drew his hand down over his mouth; I think to hide a smile.

“Young man, yuh seem born to leave a path uh destruction behind yuh,” he said.  “There’s a lot uh fixing to be done on that gate—­and I don’t reckon I ever will find the padlock again.”

His eyes met the keen, steady look of dad, stopped there, wavered, softened to friendliness.  Their hands went out half-shyly and met.  “Kids are sure terrors, these days,” he remarked, and they laughed a little.  “Us old folks have got to stand in the corners when they’re around.”

* * * * *

King’s Highway is open trail.  Beryl and I go through there often in the Yellow Peril, since dad gave me outright the Bay State Ranch and all pertaining thereto—­except, of course, Perry Potter; he stays on of his own accord.

Frosty is father King’s foreman, and Aunt Lodema went back East and stayed there.  She writes prim little letters to Beryl, once in awhile, and I gather that she doesn’t approve of the match at all.  But Beryl does, and, if you ask me, I approve also.  So what does anything else matter?