Part 2 (1/2)

Now, Bessie there,” he pointed to Bess who had stayed for dinner, ”she's not so modest, but she's kind and loyal. She's a little spoiled, but she'll get by.”

Bess blushed all shades of the rainbow at Adair's frankness. Used to being babied and somewhat pampered at home, his outspokenness troubled her. She felt strangely like crying. Nan caught her eye and smiled encouragingly. Mrs. Sherwood patted her hand beneath the tablecloth. And Alice, well, Alice was a dear, for she turned the conversation toward school, and both Nan and Bess utterly forgot themselves in telling of the horse show in which they had both taken part during the last week at school.

”So you think you can ride, eh?” Adair MacKenzie was secretly pleased at both of the young girls. ”Well, we'll see. I'll put you each on a Mexican mule and let you try to climb a mountain and see what happens.”

He chuckled at the thought.

Alice laughed merrily at this. ”Well, you'll never get me on one,” she vowed. ”Once was enough. Instead of the mule pulling me up the narrow path, I pulled the mule up. I never worked harder in my life.”

”Oh, my sweet, you never worked at all.” Adair shook his finger at his daughter. ”But you'll work this summer--if that old housekeeper of ours keeps her resolution not to go down to that dirty hole which we call a hacienda. The words are hers,” he explained to Nan and Bess.

”She once, when she was a very young girl, spent a summer on a sugar beet farm here in the north. A lot of Mexicans worked on it. They were miserably treated and poorly paid. As a result their huts were like hovels. She saw some of them and now she says that wild horses couldn't drag her into that country down there. She'd rather see me starve first.

But I'll get her yet.” Adair MacKenzie smiled as though he liked opposition. ”I'll show her who is boss,” he ended.

”Of course you will, daddy,” Alice agreed. ”But now tell us, when are we going? How long are we going to stay? And whom have you invited?”

This last question put Adair MacKenzie in a corner and he knew it.

Really, a very kind and extremely impulsive soul, when he went on these summer jaunts for pleasure he was apt to go about for weeks, inviting all his friends. As a result, no matter how large the house was he rented, it was always too small, and no matter what preparation Alice made for guests, they were always inadequate.

Now, as he sat thinking, a mischievous light came into his eye. ”There is only one that I've invited,” he teased, ”besides these girls that will interest you.”

”And that is--?”

”Walker Jamieson, that smart-alecky reporter that we met in San Francisco a couple of years ago. Remember?”

”Remember? Of course I remember and he wasn't smart alecky. He was kind and sweet and--” But Alice didn't finish her sentence, for she became conscious of the fact that all the eyes around the dinner table were on her. She blushed prettily.

”Anyway,” she justified herself, ”he'll be a help in handling you, for he's smart, almost as smart as you are, daddy.”

”A reporter! You mean to say a real newspaper reporter will be down there with us?” Nan couldn't contain herself any longer.

”Yep, a no good reporter.” Adair MacKenzie tried hard to look disdainful as he said this, but he didn't succeed very well and both Nan and Bess guessed that he had a genuine regard for the ”young scamp” as he called him. ”Got to have someone around,” he muttered as he drank his coffee, ”to help handle you women, even if it's a young scalawag who spends all his time tracking down stories for your worthless newspaper.”

”Stories!” Bess and Nan were wide-eyed.

”Now, see here,” Adair shook his finger in the direction of the two young girls, ”reporters are no good. They're a lazy lot that hang around with their feet on desks pretending to think. Think! Why, I never knew one yet that had a thought worth telling, let alone writing.

”This one that you are going to meet is no better than the rest. M-m-m, and no worse either,” he conceded as he noted the expression on Alice's face. ”I asked him to come along because he has a knack of making things lively wherever he is.

”Soon's he gets those two big feet of his down off his desk, he makes things hum. That's the way he is, lazy one minute, full of action the next. If there's absolutely nothing happening, he knows how to stir things up. I rather like a man like that--not that I like him,” he added hastily, ”but if we're going to go across the border this summer, got to have someone like him around. Might just as well be Jamieson as anyone else.”

”And will he write stories while we're there and will they be in the paper?” Nan was reluctant to let the conversation about the young reporter drop.

”Never can tell anything about people like him,” Adair MacKenzie shook his head as though he would be the last person in the world to predict anything about reporters. Could he have looked into the future he would have shaken it even more violently, for in the next few weeks Walker Jamieson, with the help of Nan and the Lakeview Hall crowd, was to uncover in Mexico one of the biggest stories of the year.

CHAPTER III

ADAIR MACKENZIE SPEAKS UP