“We’re all glad,” said the Captain. “Small use any man would have for this world if it weren’t for the women to help him out under difficulties.”
“Poor Captain! How he misses his wife!” she thought, as she sought the wagon where Scotty lay.
“I’d get well a great deal faster if I had you for a nurse, Daphne,” he said appealingly.
“Nature is doing her best for you. She’s mending your bones thoroughly. If we patched you up in too big a hurry, we’d soon be in trouble again.”
“But I feel like a chained eagle, lying here.”
“Captain Ranger is making you a pair of crutches, Mr. Burns. You’ll soon be out again on your well foot, if you obey orders. Where’s mamma?”
“In the shadow of the wagon, yonder.”
Mrs. Benson was resting in the shade, indulging in a silent reverie. “Are all the teachings of my life to be overthrown?” she said, as she thrust a note into her pocket and buried her face in her hands. “Can it be true that Daphne was right and I was wrong? What will people say? Daphne has good principles, but she’s as unsentimental as a Mandan squaw. She has no more romance in her make-up than black Susannah. Yet,” and a fluttering hope welled up in her heart, “she’s a true and faithful daughter. I would to Heaven that all the people in the world were as good.”
She produced her treasured note again, and read it stealthily.