For answer, Bedelia threatened to quit, declaring shrilly that she would not work where nothing was safe under lock and key, and a girl might work her fingers to the bone putting up jell for spoiled, ungrateful, meddlesome Matties to waste, and so forth and so on.
Mary V wisely withdrew from the kitchen without having her question answered.

She asked no more questions of any one.

In silk kimono and Indian moccasins, one of her pet incongruities, she forthwith explored the yard down by the corrals which the bunk house had hidden from her view.

There was no sign of Johnny Jewel's airplane anywhere.

Mary V was thorough, even to the point of looking for tracks of the little wheels, but at last she was convinced, and returned to the porch to digest the ominous fact of Johnny's failure to arrive.
He must have started,--she would not admit the possibility that he had deliberately ignored her ultimatum,--but she would make sure.