“Left his share in the company to the boy,” Hank nodded. “Well, it ain’t anything against him to be a rich man’s son. Some of ’em are some account.” He spoke heavily. Hilda felt that he was making an effort. She hurried to help out.
“Oh—he isn’t quite that. They had other children, grown up, that got most of what was left. They’d given Pearse a fine education—but he’s really sort of poor. He says it’s just a little share he has in the J I C. He wasn’t even sure he’d get that. But he loves this western country just the same as you and I do.” An appealing glance. “So that’s what brought him out here when Mr. Masters died—he came to get a job with the J I C. And he got it. And he worked awfully hard. He was promoted three times in the first year. And now he’s doing splendidly. He—”
She stopped, looking entreatingly in his face. He said very quietly:
“You think a heap of him, don’t you, Pettie?”
“Oh, I do. And you will, too, Uncle Hank, when you know him.”
“Well, dear,” he said slowly, “I’m bound to warn you that it sorta puts my bristles up—the idea of a young feller that’s a friend of yourn, and that I hain’t never seen, coming all set to be unfriendly with me—your guardian. It—Hilda”—when had he ever used her full name like that!—“it don’t look so good to me. Well—what is it, Buster?” as a head was poked in at the door. “Want me over at the north pasture, this morning? All right,” with apparent relief; then to Hilda, “Run tell Sam Kee to put me up a snack, Pettie. Have to make a day of it up there, I reckon. But if I ain’t on hand when your company first gets here, you and Miss Valery can make him welcome. Reckon I won’t be missed.”
He seemed to become aware that he’d spoken disconcertingly, smiled and patted her shoulder.
Hilda wanted to say that he would be missed—very much—but she had a habit of truth-telling that interfered. She got the lunch for him, ran out to the corral with it, and stood looking rather blankly after the two men as they rode away. The thought that Uncle Hank and Pearse might never like each other at all, might actually quarrel, that the thing which Pearse seemed to hold against the older man might turn out to be something that couldn’t be explained away— Well, only a few hours now. She flew to the kitchen, borrowed broom, cloths, dustpan, from Sam Kee, rolled her sleeves high, tied a towel over her hair, and slipped down to the cyclone cellar to make it beautiful for Pearse’s first view of it. Here—nowhere else—they two alone—he would tell her. She would know at last.
Captain Snow had followed down; while she worked he dozed on the foot of the couch where Pearse had slept, on the blanket which he had sent to her as a gift. But her noisy cleaning work annoyed the old cat. He was getting to an age when he disliked excitement. He finally jumped down, ambled gravely across and mewed to be let out, swishing his fluffy tail and pawing delicately at the door edge. Hilda let him go, an unusual frown between her brows. She worked on, periods of absolute rigidity alternating with moments of fiercely energetic action, till Sam Kee’s gong sounded above stairs—and she wasn’t decent for the table, let alone dressed to go over and meet Pearse.
Hilda started for the station very soon after lunch. When the buckboard came around, Burch jeered that she’d be fully an hour early for the train. But once she had seen her little retreat all spick and span, the checkerboard she and Pearse had played so many games on laid out, the books they had read together on the shelf, she was too restless to wait longer.