Donald laughed sleepily.
“Connie, you are a dear little girl,” he said tenderly.
The endearing tone held a paternal ring, and Connie bit her lip in vexation.
“I’d like to have you and your father go with me to Vancouver some day. Will you go?”
For a moment Connie was silent. “When—when my dreams come true,” she responded with an embarrassed smile.
Then he told her of the city and its ways and the things people did. She listened, not with amazement, but with a contented smile, as though what he told her was a confirmation of her dreams. But when he told her of the grand opera, the music, the costumes and the singing, her grey eyes wide with longing, she sighed deeply.
Donald’s voice trailed to a drowsy close; his chest rose and fell regularly, his features relaxed. He felt as though he were floating, exquisitely floating, on a sea of fleecy clouds that was bearing him softly away. A delicious langour enthralled him—an enchantment drowsy and dim. He felt himself drifting, drifting . . . He was asleep.
The willows at the lower end of the meadow were pushed cautiously aside, and Hand’s head appeared in the opening. For two days he had lain hidden awaiting an opportunity to waylay Donald. The day after the fight he had boarded the train for the Coast, but had slipped from the car at the station below.
His face—unprepossessing at its best—was now a horrible sight. The thick lips were swollen and cracked, the eyes discoloured and puffed, and the broken teeth bared in a snarl as he saw Donald lying by the stream. Every hour since the fight Hand’s hatred for Donald had grown blacker. He would show him that he, Ole Hand, deserved his reputation as a fighter. He would hold this crippled man helpless while he showered blows on his unprotected face, make him cry out for mercy on bended knees; perhaps kill him. His hatred grew hotter and deeper as he watched him lying peacefully beside the girl who had been the cause of the fight in which he had been ignominiously whipped.
Connie sat gazing intently down on the sleeper. A sudden thought seized her, bringing a warm flush to her cheeks. Why not? No one would ever know. Would she dare? She glanced timorously about her, then leaned slowly over, her curls falling about her face, and touched her soft lips to Donald’s cheek.