Part 19

"Ah yes; but if it drives the family out-of-doors?"

"It shouldn't. You should take it all as a part of the happy world of democracy wherein even the maid-servant sings at her toil."

"But our democratic neighbors are all the time coming to look round the place. We've no privacy whatever. On Sunday afternoon they drive through the grounds in procession; you'd think our place a public park and we the keepers."

In all this banter Virginia was given the English viewpoint as to Western manners and conditions. She perceived that the Enderbys, notwithstanding their heavy-set prejudices, were persons of discernment and right feeling. It certainly was impertinent of the neighbors to ride through the grounds as if they were public, and Mrs. Enderby was justified in resenting it.

Ross turned to her. "Enderby is the kind of Englishman who wants to adapt himself to new conditions, but can't."

"You don't seem like an Englishman at all."

"Well, I was caught young, and, besides, I'm really Irish--on my father's side."

"Oh, that's different!" she exclaimed, as though that somehow brought him nearer to her own people.

"It is, isn't it?" he laughingly agreed. "But Enderby--I suppose his pedigree goes back to Cedric and his swineherds. You can't change that kind."

"I hadn't the least thought of seeing you here. How did you happen to come?"

"Redfield telephoned me at the mill, and I came at once. I haven't been here since May, and I just thought I'd take a half a day off. Luckily, my understudy was with me. I left him 'on the job.'"

He did not tell her that she was the principal reason for this sudden descent upon Elk Lodge, and no one but Redfield knew the killing ride he had taken in order to be in at the beginning of the dinner. The girl's face and voice, especially her voice, had been with him night and day as he went about his solitary duties. Her life problem had come to fill his mind to a disturbing degree, and he was eager to know more of her and of her struggle against the vice and vulgarity of the Forks.

"How is your mother?" he asked, a few minutes later.

"Not at all well. Mr. Redfield is to take the doctor back with us to-morrow." The ecstasy died out of her face, and the flexible lips drooped with troubled musing. "I am afraid she suffers more than she will admit."

"She needs a rest and change. She should get away from her seat at that cash-register, and return to the open air. A touch of camp-life would help her. She sticks too close to her work."

"I know she does, but she won't let me relieve her, even for an hour. It isn't because she doesn't trust me; she says it's because she doesn't want me sitting there--so--publicly. She doesn't oppose my housekeeping any more--"

"You certainly have made the old hotel into a place of miraculous neatness."

She flushed with pleasure. "I have done something, but not as I'd like to do. I really think if mother wishes to sell she could do so now to much better advantage."

"I've no doubt of it. Really, I'm not being funny, Miss Wetherford, when I say you've done something heroic. It's no easy thing to come into a place like that and make it habitable. It shows immense courage and self-reliance on your part. It's precisely the kind of work this whole country needs."

His praise, sincere and generous, repaid her for all she had gone through. It was a great pleasure to hear her small self praised for courage and self-reliance by one whose daily work was heroic. All things conspired to make a conquest of her heart, for the ranger bore himself with grace, and dealt with his silver deftly. His face, seen from the side, was older and sterner than she had thought it, but it was very attractive in line.

She said: "Mr. Redfield and I were talking of 'the war' to-day--I mean our 'cattle-man's invasion'--and I learned that you were the sergeant who came for the prisoners."

He smiled. "Yes; I was serving in the regular army at that time."

"You must have been very young?"

"I was--a kid."

"That was a brave thing to do."

"Not at all. I was a soldier under orders of the commander of the post. I dared not disobey."

She would not have it so. "But you knew that you were going into danger?"

"To be honest about it, I did; but I relied on my blue coat to protect me."