"Oh, the school. You see she must take a place with other people. She has no relatives, and friends must stand in their stead."
He turned back to his paper, but he was not reading. The little girl was all his. He had a feeling when they left Maine that nothing and no one should come between them. Every thought, every desire should cluster about her. He would make a fortune for her. His first plan in going to California was to start to the gold fields for the sake of adventures. He would cut loose from all old recollections. He would leave Laverne Westbury a comfortable and satisfied wife and mother. He had no bitterness against his rival now. It had all been so different. Many a night on shipboard he lived over those few sad weeks and hugged to his heart the consolation that she had loved him, and that fate had been cruel to both. And then, conscious of the finer strain of fatherhood that had so long lain fallow in his soul, the child slipped into the place, and aims were changed for him. There would be enough for him to do in the new town where everything was needed, and he could turn his hand to almost anything. But he must keep to her, she was the apple of his eye, and he would go groping in sorrowful darkness without her.
He had a curious feeling at first that he must hide her away lest her father should start up from somewhere and claim her, and was glad to light on that out-of-the-way place. The long voyage had been like living in the same village with these people. The New England reticence of Miss Holmes appealed to him in a peculiar manner, he was reticent himself. Then the child took the greatest fancy to her. She was rather timid about this new world while the others were ready for adventures. And when he offered her a home for the care of the child she was very willing to accept it for the present. Her belief was that when she was rested and in her usual health she should teach school again.
Her two friends had teased her a little about finding a possible lover in Jason Chadsey. She had the fine feminine delicacy that shrank from the faintest suspicion of putting herself in the way of such a possibility. He was a sturdy, upright, plain-spoken fellow, not at all her ideal, and she still had the romance of girlhood. She came to know presently by her womanly intuition that marriage had no place in his thoughts, that were centred in the little girl. Perhaps, her mother was his only sister, a deserted wife, she gathered from childish prattle of Laverne's. She knew so little about her past. Uncle Jason had come when they were in great want, and her mother had died. And now, Jason Chadsey knew it would be best for this idea to gain credence. He would always be her uncle.
But he had some duties toward her. She could not always remain a child, a plaything. That was the sorrow of it. There must be a rich, delightful life before her. She must have the joys her mother had missed, the prosperity that had not come to her.
He looked up from the paper presently.
"About the school," he began. "Yes, I have been considering it. And you will have quite enough to do to keep the house and have the oversight of her; I will make it an object for you to stay. We get along comfortably together, though sometimes I feel I am a queer unsocial Dick, much occupied now with business. But it is all for her. She is the only thing out of a life that has been all ups and downs, but, please God, there'll be some clear sailing now. I like San Francisco. I like the rush and bustle and newness, the effort for a finer civilization that has strength and purpose in it. Heaven knows there is enough of the other sort, but the dross does get sifted out and the gold is left. It will be so here, and these earnest men ten years hence will be proud of the city they are rearing."
He glanced at her steadily, forgetting he had wandered from the main question.
"You will not leave us——"
"I? Oh, no;" yet she colored a little.