“If it were so, it were a grievous fault,” she quoted, gaily.
“I don’t think so!” He threw out his chest and looked down at her from his full height. “A man’s bound to have ambitions of some sort,” he said, “They’re a measure of himself. Of course I have mine. I want the things I want when I can get them; but I want them, nevertheless, and I mean to have them.”
“Such as a gold collar for your donkey?” Helen asked, enigmatically.
Westcott looked puzzled, but she did not explain.
“Not exactly that,” he finally said, “If my donkey won’t go without a gold collar I’m sorry for him; because he’s going just the same. He’s got to carry me, ‘For the good of the order.’ This Territory needs men, Miss Anderson: and I mean to be one of the men that it needs.”
“Oh! That is good!” Helen’s sympathetic response quickened what Westcott, if he had characterized it, would have called his good impulse.
“There’s a lot that needs straightening out within our lines,” he said, “And I want the chance to help in the work. At any rate, it’s not an ignoble ambition.”
“Indeed it is not.” Helen had never before seen Westcott in this mood, and she rather reproached herself that she did not feel a keener response. She felt that she had not done him justice.
“I am glad you think about those things,” she told him. “Father talks to me, sometimes, and I know that he is often troubled. It seems as if every man is solely for himself. We need those who can see wrong in high places, as well as low; and who have courage to combat it.”
Westcott felt a pang of wretchedness as he answered her frank glance. He realized that she would despise him if she knew some of the things that he had done, and he winced in the realization. But he meant to leave all that behind. He would do something for Mrs. Hallard, and once he had won this splendid girl he would walk the open way. Heavens! What could a man not do, with such a helpmate!