Coming Home to Wyoming (Peaceful Valley Series Book 1) Read Free Page B

fever.”
    He grinned. “If you mean a degree, or a diploma, I wasn’t there long enough. I guess you could say I swapped a diploma for a chance to go looking for excitement and adventure.”
    “Did you find it?”
    Griff sighed. “A lot more than I wanted to.”
    “Sounds kinda dumb to me, just runnin’ off like that, when you coulda’ stuck around and got that paper to prove to folks you been to college. I never been to no real school, with desks and one of them big blackboards, and all. When I was little, my ma taught me my letters, but after she passed on… She give me music lessons, too. I bet you’d think I was lyin’ if I was to tell you that I can play a harp.”
    “A harp ?” he repeated.
    “Yep, like in them pretty Sunday school pictures of heaven, only mine was so little you could hold it in your lap. It was my ma’s, really, that she brung over from Ireland, and it looked like it was made outta’ pure gold.”
    Griff smiled. “Gold, huh?”
    “I reckon you figure I was makin’ it up about me knowin’ how to make music on a gold harp. Well, it’s the truth, and I can prove it. You ever heard of a fella called Adams Moses? Always wore this big white wig on his head, even bein’ a little boy, and all?”
    “Do you mean Amadeus Mozart ?” he asked, after thinking for a few moments.
    “That’s him. Ma taught me this real pretty tune this Moses kid made up when he weren’t much more than a little baby. He got real famous, and went around playin’ his tunes for folks, even some kings and queens. I’m just hopin’ I still remember the right notes—next time I come across another gold harp—like the one my ma had.”
    She paused for several moments, and wiped her eyes. “Anyway, like I told you before, I can read and write, and I’m real good at figures.”
    He smiled. “Well, then, Miss Worthington, you can practice your reading on the restaurant menu, and check our bill for mistakes in addition—if we ever get there.”
    Clarinda still looked doubtful.
    “You’re real sure I look all right?”
    “You look lovely,” Griff lied. He pointed to her bare feet. “But you might want to put your shoes on.”
     
     
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
    When they had finished supper—an adventure in confusion and chaos Griff would remember for years to come—he escorted Miss Worthington back to the hotel—another first for her, as it turned out.
    “I reckon you’re mad at me now,” she suggested as they walked back to the hotel. “The way I carried on, and all… about that woman who brung us our food.”
    Griff sighed. “I’m not mad, Clarinda,” he said, lying again for the sixth or seventh time, that day. “But you’re going to have to learn that not everyone who takes money for a service is trying to rob you.”
    Clarinda scuffed her toe around in the dust for a moment. “All she done was bring us a couple o’ plates,” she replied sullenly.
    “She’s a waitress, and that’s what waitresses do, and what they get paid for.”
    “All we got was a couple little bitty old pork chops and whatever that mess of green stuff was.”
    “It’s called spinach,” Griff explained patiently, “and they tell me it’s very nourishing for a growing girl—like you.”
    “ Good! Tasted just like grass, if you ask me—old wet grass that got cut and left out to rot. I never knew nobody to boil up a bunch o’ rotten grass and then eat it, ‘less they was real poor, or maybe kinda’ touched in the head.”
    “Is that why you dumped your dinner in a potted plant?”
    “Well, as sure as sugar wasn’t gonna eat it,” she grumbled. “My pa always said not to eat nothin’ that smelled like it’d gone off.”
    “All right, then,” Griff groaned, “the next time you don’t like something, could you just try to be polite about it, and leave it on your plate?”
    She snorted. “Pa woulda’ took a switch to me for somethin’ like that—wastin’ good food.”
    With the discussion going in