Bertha was thankful that Eunice had not volunteered to come and assist her in dressing for the hasty journey, for it was necessary to hang the case of stones in a little bag round her neck under her clothes, and she did not want even the eyes of her friend to see that. The coat had been made into a bundle, which was rolled round with a piece of coarse canvas and securely tied with string.
“It will seem dreadful to be away from you, even for two nights, Grace,” she murmured, when the time came to say goodbye.
“Don’t worry, dear, it will do you good to be away, and you will come away with a load gone from your mind, and I shall have a load gone from mine also,” answered Grace, who mostly contrived to put the best face possible upon any situation.
Bertha nodded; the relief would be tremendous. She had felt so much like a thief with regard to that case of stones, and she was always afraid lest in some way she might lose them, which would be disaster indeed, since in such a case she would never be able to make the rightful owner believe that her intentions had been all right.
“It is just about time that you had a holiday, I should say,” remarked Bill Humphries, when at length they were really under way, and the two horses were floundering along through the soft mud of the trail. “You have shown real grit in the way you have stood by the Ellis lot, and if that poor woman ever gets better she will owe her life to you, for she has had more than nursing. She has had peace of mind, and I guess that beats doctor’s stuff into fits.”
A thrill of positive rapture swept over Bertha. It was beautiful to think that she had been able to do things. And there was not in all the wide west a happier girl than she was, as the wagon bumped and swayed through the slush of the surface thaw, and over the chunks of frozen earth which lay beneath. She would have been flung out of the wagon half a dozen times before Pentland Broads was reached if it had not been that she clung tightly to the side of the wagon. How Bill Humphries managed to keep his seat, seeing that he held on to nothing but the driving lines, was a problem, but he did it; and after being jolted, bumped, and shaken until she was sore all over, the end of the journey was finally reached in safety, and Bertha received a riotous welcome in the household of the Humphries.
Still she was too restless and anxious concerning the outcome of her visit to Edgar Bradgate to-morrow to be able to really enjoy the little change of spending an evening in the house of someone else. To her it was a dreadful ordeal to pay a visit to a man whom she scarcely knew, remind him that she had at one time saved his life, and that she had not received the money which he had emptied his purse to leave for her. How horrible it would be to be obliged to tell him that, and yet for her own sake she must do it, since not even to a stranger would she care to stand in such an ambiguous position.
It was freezing hard next morning when the start for Rownton was made in the faint light of dawn, and for the first few miles the horses could scarcely keep their feet at all, while Bill Humphries slid and slithered along at their heads, pulling them up when they went down, scolding and encouraging at the top of his voice, and guiding them on to the roughest part of the trail, so that they might have the better chance to keep their feet.
Bertha, sitting perched in the wagon, had more ado than ever to keep herself from being pitched out of the wagon. But it would never do to risk being damaged, seeing what she carried tied in the little bag round her neck, so she swayed and jolted with the wagon, determined that she would not go over unless the crazy old thing really capsized, which luckily it did not. Then, after a couple of hours of this sort of progress, the sun came out with dazzling brilliance, the top ice speedily became slush, and the worst of the journey was over.
Then Bill Humphries clambered into the wagon to ride, for there was no sense in using his own feet so long as his horses were able to stand on theirs, and the first question he asked Bertha, after he had taken his seat at her side, was the part of Rownton to which she wished to go.