Nellie went the full length of her chain, and watched the two men canter off.

When she could no longer watch, she listened, every nerve intent; and when at last the sounds of the horses’ hoofs had died away in the distance, she heaved a deep sigh, and after the manner of all philosophers, resigned herself to an extra supply of bones.

CHAPTER II
HILDA COMES

THE next morning after Robert Strafford had gone off to town to meet Hilda, Ben Overleigh went to his friend’s house and put everything in order, and after having paid special attention to the arrangement of his moustache, he set out to visit Miss Dewsbury, the deaf lady, intending, if possible, to coax her piano out of her. He was a great favourite of hers, and he was indeed the only person who was not thoroughly frightened of her. She was quite seventy years of age, but she had unending strength and vitality,[33] and worked like a navvy on her ranch, only employing a man when she absolutely must. And when she did employ any one, she mounted to the top of the house, and kept watch over him with an opera-glass, so that she might be quite sure she was having the advantage of every moment of his time. The boys in the neighbourhood often refused to work for her; for, as Jesse Holles said, it was bad enough to be watched through an opera-glass, but to have to put up with all her scoldings, and not be able to say a word of defence which could reach her, except through a trumpet—no, by Jove, that wasn’t the job for him! Also there were other complaints against her: she never gave any one a decent meal, and she never dreamed of offering anything else but skimmed[34] milk which people did not seem able to swallow. They swallowed the opera-glass and the trumpet and the scoldings and the tough beef, but when it came to the skimmed milk, they felt that they had already endured enough. So the best people in the valley would not work for Miss Dewsbury—as least, not willingly; and it had sometimes happened that Ben Overleigh had used his powers of persuasion to induce some of the young fellows to give her a few days’ help when she was in special need of it; and on more than one occasion, when he could not make any one else go to her, he had himself offered her his services. Thus she owed him some kindness; and moreover his courtliness and his gentle voice were pleasing to her. He was the only person, so she said,[35] who did not shout down the trumpet. And yet she could hear every word he uttered.

This morning when he arrived at her house, she was vainly trying to hear what the butcher said, and the butcher was vainly trying to make himself understood. She was in a state of feverish excitement, and the butcher looked in the last stage of nervous exhaustion.

“You’ve just come in time to save my life,” he said to Ben. “For the love of heaven, tell her through the trumpet, that beef has gone up two cents a pound, that she can’t have her salted tongue till next week, and that she has given me seven cents too little.”

Then Ben of the magic voice spoke these mystic words through the trumpet, and the butcher went off comforted, and Miss Dewsbury smiled at her favourite; and when he told her that he had come to ask a special favour of her, she was so gracious that Ben felt he would have no difficulty in carrying out his project. But when she understood what he wanted, things did not go so easily. To be sure, she did not use the piano, she said, but then that was no reason why any one else should use it for her. Ben stood waiting patiently until she should have exhausted all her eloquence, and then he stooped down, and quietly picked one or two suckers off a lemon-tree, and took his pruning-knife from his pocket, and snipped off a faded branch. After this, with quiet deliberation, he twirled his great moustaches. That settled the matter.

“You may have the piano,” she said, “but you must fetch it yourself.”

Ben did not think it necessary to add that he had already arranged for it to be fetched at once, and he lingered a little while with her, listening to her complaint about the men she employed and about their laziness, which she observed through the opera-glass. Ben was just going to suggest that perhaps the opera-glass made the men lazy, when he remembered that he must be circumspect, and so he contrived some beautiful speech about the immorality of laziness; he even asked for a glass of skimmed milk, and off he cantered, raising his hat and bowing chivalrously to the old lady rancher. Before very long, her piano stood in Robert Strafford’s little house, and Ben spent a long time in cleaning and dusting it.

After he had finished this task, he became very restless, and finally went down to the workshop and made a rough letter-box, which he fixed on to a post and placed at the corner of the road leading up to his friend’s ranch. Two hours were left. He did a little gardening and watered the tiny grass-plot. He looked at the sky. Blue-black clouds were hovering over the mountains, obscuring some and trying to envelop others.