“Why shouldn’t I tell you that I care for you more than for anyone else in the world?” he demanded. “I am not so clever as you by a long way, and you always make me feel that I am the very clumsiest animal that ever wore shoe leather; but Mother says that is very good for me, and she told me to-night that she owed a deep debt of gratitude to the little girl at Ripple for smartening up her son. Can’t you care for me at all, Pam?”
Pam went very white. What possessed this infatuated young man to talk to her of love, when for aught she knew there might be shame in front of her far greater than any she had had to bear as yet? It was fairly plain that her grandfather had had no hand in the hurting of Sam Buckle, but it was quite possible he was involved in something else which would not bear the light of day, seeing that he must have fled from his home to avoid meeting the surprise party.
“It is not a time to think of oneself,” she said in a chilly tone, which was all the colder because of the wave of self-pity that suddenly filled her heart. It did seem hard that her life should be clouded by this mystery, and just at the time when things might have been really delightful. “We never know what is going to happen next, or whether Grandfather will come home.”
“That seems to me all the more reason why you should have someone with a right to stand by you,” said Don, whose face was setting into stern lines of determination. “You have Jack here now, it is true, but he is only a boy, and I want the right to stand by you.”
She shook her head. Speech was so difficult just now, and oh! she could have cried because her golden evening was spoiled. But in her way she was as resolute as Don, and she was determined that she would avoid anything that might bring more suffering later on.
“It is very nice of you to want to shelter me,” she said gently. “But I don’t need it. I mean, I am quite able to stand up under things without help. I could not let you care for me—I mean, go on caring for me, when perhaps there is heavy disgrace to come on us in the near future. Of course we know now that Grandfather did not hurt Sam Buckle, but we do not understand why he had to leave his home. We know he did not die in the forest, because Mose Paget knew a man who had seen him and talked to him. This was all easy of understanding while we thought he had gone away because of what happened to his neighbour. Now it is a maddening mystery, and I can’t begin to think of myself or to plan for being happy in my own way. I have to do my very best to keep the farm going so that it shall pay, and so that there may be a little money for Grandfather if he comes home. I came to New Brunswick hoping to make a place for Mother and the younger children, but my work seems to go in the direction of helping Grandfather all I can, even though I have never seen him.”
Pam was talking now for talking’s sake. She wanted to stave off all the things which she instinctively felt Don wanted to say to her. She was stifling back, too, a very real heartache. They had been such friends, such real chums, and it was hard to feel that she must give up what she had had, just because circumstances would not let her give more. But she did not know Don quite as well as she thought she did. He received all she had to say in a very non-committal silence, and then, when the house at Ripple was reached, he said quietly:
“I can wait. You have not said that you did not care for me, or that there was anyone else, and nothing else matters. No, I won’t come in to-night, thank you, it is getting late. I shall come over again and take you out when there is time, and things will be just as they were.”
Would they? Pam greatly doubted it. She would always be self-conscious now when she was with Don; the old comradeship would have disappeared, and she would feel it necessary to stand on guard always.
It was quite early next morning when Galena Gittins drove up to the house in a smart little wagon that she had bought for herself from her own earnings.