“Good for the doc!” cried Joe. “Me for the office and then back to the woods. Hooray!”
“Not for a day or two,” said Jack. “Things are going all right. You keep quiet.”
Joe sank back in his chair. “I suppose so, but—well, I want to look after them myself.” Far off against the blue sky a wedge of black specks bored through space, swinging off beyond the limits of the town. “Look, Jack! The first geese going north. That means the end of winter and open water. We’ll start our drives in a few weeks.”
“Yes, Joe.” She perched on the arm of the big chair and stared after the birds, her face clouded with discontent. “That’s life, and you can live it. Oh, heavens! Why wasn’t I a boy? I’d love it so. I want to go up to the camps and see the rollways broken out and the banking grounds emptied. I want to wear spiked boots and ride a stick in white water and use a peavey. I want to come back to the wanegan at night, and eat and dry off by a big fire and sleep out of doors. I want—don’t you dare to laugh at me, Joe Kent—I want to come into town with the bully-boys, with a hat pulled down over my eyes and a cigar in my mouth sticking up at an angle, and sing ‘Jimmy Judge,’ and ‘From Far Temiskamang.’ I want”—she faced him defiantly—“I want to ride up town in a hack—with my feet out of the window! Yes, I do. And now tell me you are shocked.”
“I might be if I saw you do it,” said Joe. “I’ve felt the same way myself—like breaking loose from everything. If you were a man you wouldn’t, though. Only the shanty boys tear off these stunts. We can’t.”
“All very well for you to talk—you could if you wanted to,” said Jack disconsolately. “I’m a girl. I can’t even go up to the camps unless dad takes me.” She voiced her grievance again. “I wish I had been a boy.”
She turned to the window and stared out. Joe rose and stood beside her, looking down at the burnished brown of her hair and the soft profile of her cheek. Once more the nameless thrill he had felt before when he had touched her hand possessed him. Hesitatingly, awkwardly, impelled by something which was not of his own volition, he put his arm around her. Instantly, as if a curtain had been rolled up—as if a screen had been withdrawn—he saw his own mind clearly.
Why, he loved her!
It came to him with a shock of utter amazement. Little Jack Crooks, his playmate, his friend, his confidant, the girl he had looked at so long with unseeing eyes—she, she was the only woman in the wide world for him. She had always been the only one. Edith Garwood? Pshaw! How could he have been so blind? Not all her radiant beauty and deceptive sweetness could compare with straight, loyal, little Jack, his chum and his love.
She seemed unconscious of his arm until he spoke her name. Then she turned her head slowly and her dark eyes looked directly into his. What she saw there brought the red to her cheeks in a wave. Up and up the telltale crimson tide leaped to her brow, to the roots of her glossy brown hair, but her gaze did not waver.