He did not even come back to the house for supper, but ate with the boys.
Mary V would have died before she would ask Johnny what was the matter, but she took what measures she could to find out, nevertheless.

She asked her dad, that evening, what Johnny thought about his aeroplane being all fixed up again.
Sudden smoked for a minute or two before he answered.

"Well, I don't know, kitten.

He didn't say." Sudden's tone was drawling and comfortable, but Mary V somehow got the notion that her dad, too, was rather disappointed in Johnny's lack of appreciation.
"Well, but what's he going to do with it, dad ?" "He didn't say, kitten." "Well, but dad, he was looking at it, and you were with him, and didn't he say _anything_, for gracious sake ?" Mary V could not have kept the exasperation out of her voice if she had tried.
Sudden's lips quirked with the beginning of a smile.

He looked at the end of his cigar, looked toward the bunk house, scraped off the cigar's ash collar on the porch rail, looked at Mary V.
"Well, he asked me how it got here to the ranch, and I told him with a wagon and team and so on.