harness and attached to strange vehicles. The "cottage" people thought it quaint. These men always stopped at Corona del Monte. They were in middle age now, of course, but they had lost very little of the high spirits of their youth. Perhaps they were a trifle more inclined to reminisce than to inaugurate anything new, but the reminiscence was lively enough. Corona del Monte was sure of a high old time when the Sociedad came aboard.
They went out in society, every one of them, and freebooted it terrifyingly. It was easier to consider them quaint than to try to account for them: so quaint they were. That solved everything. They were in some mysterious way not only acceptable, but even much sought for, and yet they never quite belonged. And they in their turn came back to the ranch and gave imitations or made characterizations that sent Daphne into shrieks of laughter. Which of course was not right after you have accepted hospitality. No one could understand how they, with their education, their wealth, and what should have been their tastes could bear to live 'way over the mountains year in and year out!
For they also had wealth. Some of it was from the cattle business, but most of it was from Corona del Monte. When the time for arrangement came, they tried to make Kenneth see that a return of the amounts they had advanced, with interest, was all they should have. But Kenneth insisted that they—and Sing Toy's contributors—should have shares with them proportionate to what they had put in. So in the long run they were all paid back many times over.
Thus it may be surmised that Sing Toy was very well off, and was in reality under no necessity of remaining in the kitchen. But he was "an old-fashioned Chinaman," so there he was.
There remains only to account for a rather bulky figure sitting smoking under one of the big trees across the lawn.
The reconciliation between Patrick Boyd and his son waited long. Boyd felt that his honour had been engaged with his Eastern associates and that his own son had made it impossible for him to fulfill his pledged engagement. That thought struck deeper than any loss of potential gains, or even that his son
