"I'd sure like to," muttered Ward ambiguously and handed her every bit of food within his reach.
"You can talk and eat at the same time, I see. So tell me what you've been doing all this while." Billy Louise spoke lightly, even flippantly, but her eyes were making love to him shyly, whether she knew it or not.
"Working," answered Ward promptly and briefly. He was thinking at the rate of a million thoughts a minute, it seemed to him, and he was afraid to let go of himself and say what he thought. One thing he knew beyond all doubt, and that was that he must be careful or he would see his air-castle blow up in small fragments and come down a hopeless ruin. He needed time to think, and Billy Louise was not giving him even a minute. So he clutched at two decisions which instinct told him might help him win to safety: He would not make love, and he would not tell Billy Louise about the gold.
"Working! Well, so have I. But working at what? Did you hire out to Junkins again? I thought you said you wouldn't till fall." Billy Louise was watching Ward rather closely, perhaps to see how far she might trust his recovered inscrutability. "Why don't you show some human inquisitiveness about my being here?" she asked irrelevantly, just as Ward was hastily choosing how he would answer her without saying too much.
"It wouldn't be polite to be inquisitive about a lady, would it?" Ward retorted, thankful for the change of subject.
"N-no—but, then, you never bother about being just polite! Charlie Fox would—"
"Charlie Fox would think you came to see him," Ward asserted uncharitably. "My head isn't swelled to that extent. Why did you come, anyway?"
"To see you." Billy Louise lost her nerve when she saw the light leap into his eyes. "To see whether you were dead or not," she revised hastily, "so mommie would stop worrying about you. Mommie has pestered the life out of me for the last month, thinking you might be sick or hurt or something. So—I was riding up this way, anyway, and—"
"I see I'll have to ride down and prove to mommie that I'm very much alive. I'm sure glad to know that somebody takes an interest in me—as if I were a real human." Ward's eyes watched furtively her face, but Billy Louise refused even to nibble at the bait.
"Why didn't you come before, then? You know mommie likes to have you."