“I know,” said Pam, whose heart was beating very fast; “but I was not thinking of Grandfather just then, I was showing you the position from Reggie’s standpoint. We cannot correctly judge other people’s motives unless we can see things from their point of view. You blame him for going to Ripple to tell Grandfather that the surprise party was coming, yet you are forgetting how Reggie and his brother suffered from the same infliction of most mistaken kindness. It was because he and Mose Paget had suffered so fiercely in their pride that Reggie went to Ripple that day.”
“Mose Paget has no pride; he would not be where he is to-day if he had had a grain of pride worth having. He is bed-rock lazy, too!” burst out Galena.
“I dare say he is not much good or he would not have left poor Reggie as he has done,” admitted Pam rather ruefully. She hated to have to speak against Mose, because of his goodness to her on that never-to-be-forgotten day when she stumbled on the lynxes at the ruined house on the old tote road. “Still, perhaps he had pride of a sort, only it got so badly wounded that he could not rise above it: people are like that sometimes. But it is Reggie that I am concerned about, and I have come to ask you to forgive him, and to let him come back here to work when he is better.”
“He was downright useful, I will say that for him, and we are lost without him,” admitted Galena. “But I should hate to have anyone about that I could not trust, and it will always be coming up against him in my mind that he played me false before.”
“You will get over that. Try him again and see,” urged Pam. Then Don called to her that it was time to be going, and she had to leave things, uncertain whether she had scored a success or failed.
CHAPTER XVIII
Met on the Trail
Pam’s face was so long when she came out of the house in response to a summons from Don that he took to rallying her on her evident depression as they drove back to Ripple.
“It looks as if you and Galena had been having a little difference of opinion, and that you had come off second best. Why didn’t you shout for me? It would have given me all the pleasure in life to have squashed her flat.”