“No—o. I like to talk about it. It makes me think I’m helping. If I were a man——”
“I’m mighty glad you’re not. Remember the time you wished you were a boy?”
“That was before——”
“Before what?”
“You know very well. Before I knew you thought anything of me.”
“You are absolutely the best little girl in the world,” he said with conviction. “I always loved you, Jack—ever since we were kids—only I didn’t know it.”
She gave his arm a quick little understanding hug, with a new womanly pride in the hard, swelling muscles that met the pressure. They stood close together, watching the last silvery reach of the river, burnished, mirror-like, lustrous beneath the sloping afternoon sun. They had been born beside it; as children they had played on it, in it; and they loved it as a part of their lives. It was a treasure stream, bearing to them year after year the loot of the northern forests—the great, brown sticks of pine. Changeless and yet ever changing it never failed to charm. Ages old but ever young it held its children in the spell of its eternal life. And so as it vanished, shut out by a landscape that seemed to rush backward as the train gathered speed, their eyes and their thoughts clung to it; for by the river and with the pine their lifework lay.
THE END
LOUIS TRACY’S CAPTIVATING AND EXHILARATING ROMANCES