Hilda’s only answer was a sort of inarticulate sound. Presently the old man spoke again.
“These here common working people marry very young, Pettie,” holding the slim wrist and tapping his own palm with her hand. “That’s natural, and right enough. You see how they live; there’s nothing to keep them from marriage. They don’t have to have education, like Charley Van Brunt’s daughter. I see now that I myself didn’t look at this thing right; seemed to me you was getting—or had got—pretty well all the learning you’d need—the reading of books and such to sort of fill out. I thought you felt that way, too, but the way you’ve took up with this idea of going over to the Marchbanks place shows me different.”
“Oh, Uncle Hank!” Hilda protested, in a misery of self-condemnation. What would he think if he knew that most of the rapture over the idea of going to the Alamositas had been because of what he’d call “a young feller,” who was working on an adjoining ranch? And she couldn’t tell him any part of it. The whole cyclone-cellar matter would have to come out, if she told him any. And it wasn’t her secret. It concerned Pearse. Pearse had a right to say whether it should be told or not. She didn’t examine very closely into her own feeling as to whether she would have told Uncle Hank if she’d felt free to. She let that go. He was speaking:
“I’ve always been so sort of drove for ready cash—and not liking to sell more cattle than needful, or to hitch any mortgages onto the old Sorrows. You haven’t had a heap of things you ought.”
“Oh, Uncle Hank—” the girl broke out again; he silenced her gently, and went on:
“But you have had pretty good schooling, and I do think that by the time you’re through your work out yonder I can have the money to send you to college. Then, when you’re graduated and got your papers to show for it, we’ll talk about a European tour. Miss Valery seems to think that would be about the figger. I believe we can cover it for you. The ranch is doing better every year. It’s coming up, Pettie, hand over fist. If that railroad should go through, as it seems it might, we’ll all be rich before you know it. Even if it don’t, I haven’t a doubt but I’ll be ready to put up the money—your money, of course, you understand, girl—for you and your aunt to go a-traveling, and for the biggest kind of a baile—or whatever shindig Miss Valery speaks for—when you git back—a young lady. Ain’t that a bright prospect?”
The childish hand, hard from much horseback riding, with a good firm grip in its slim fingers, trembled in his, as Hilda answered:
“Yes, Uncle Hank; I’ll do my best!”
He seemed scarcely to hear her.
“You’re going out there—plumb away from me—to a new life, at least for a spell. We don’t neither of us know what you may run onto, honey. I’m just obliged to feel a—to—well, to fix it so’t you’d see that your Uncle Hank would understand—do you see what I’m driving at, Pettie?”