"Well, it's whatever they have out here."
"And sha'n't I ever know what your friend was thinking?"
"He was probably thinking of his dinner," said Bobby, gazing at him reassuringly with her free eye.
After she had departed to make sure that the steamer got properly under way, he tortured himself with suspicions. What possible secrets could she have with this unknown friend, who waxed sentimental over moonlit trails and wind-swept grassfields? Had not some one told him of an unhappy love-affair? He searched his memory. Suddenly there came to him the disturbing figure of a stalwart young man on a broncho, with leather overalls, jingling spurs, a silk handkerchief knotted about his throat, and a pair of keen, humorous eyes lighting up a sun-bronzed face.
Then he smiled at his quick alarm. Hadn't she told him it was one of her foster-brothers, one of those lads whom he persisted in regarding as children? It was the most natural thing in the world that an impulsive, big-hearted creature like Bobby would be on terms of affectionate intimacy with those boys with whom she had been brought up.
He did not feel fully reassured, however, until he put the question to her flatly:
"That letter you were reading me," he said at his first opportunity—"you won't mind telling me if it is from that chap I saw at the station?"
"I don't mind telling you. But you mustn't tell the captain."
"The captain? Oh, to be sure. Doesn't fancy your friends, the Fords. I remember."
From that time on he boldly and openly entered the lists for Bobby's favor. The ten days he had allowed himself to drift with the tide of his inclination were passing with incredible swiftness, and he resorted to every means, from the subtlest strategy to the most domineering insolence, to monopolize every waking moment of her time.