He walked across, and met Ess waiting at the outer door.
“You will find Aleck inside,” she said quietly and coldly.
“Thank you,” he said gravely, and stepped into the room and on into the bedroom.
“Hello, Aleck.”—“Hello, mate,” she heard, and marvelling at the apparent coldness of the greeting, she slipped out and strolled across to the Ridge, and sat down and looked long into the darkness. She felt herself trembling with excitement, and again and again had to force herself to stop thinking what the greeting would have been like between her and Steve if this thing had not come between them. She was angered and ashamed by her rioting thoughts, and tried to remind herself she was engaged to another man. She tried, too, to spur her anger against Steve by recalling the incidents of the night at the dogger’s hut, but the chiefest of these that haunted her were his drawn cheeks and sunken eyes, and the memory of that blow she had struck him.
She rose at last and walked back, and as she entered Aleck called to her to come in. Steve was standing by the chair he had risen from, and when she came in Aleck said, “Look here, Miss Ess, you’ll have to make Steve stop here. Says he’s not fit for work, and talks about not loafing here, and rot like that. I’m not going to put up with this wholesale desertion of nurses. Miss Ess is going down to Coolongolong, you know, Steve. You wouldn’t leave a chap to the tender mercies of Blazes, would you?”
“I hope you will stay,” said Ess. “I have told Mr. Sinclair that I was going to pay the visit he’d asked me to so often. I shall probably go to-morrow night. I—I hope your hurts are better. I only heard of them a day or two ago.”
“They are nothing much really,” he said; “I’ll get over them easily enough.”
He laid a slight emphasis on “them,” and Ess glanced at him. “You get over things quickly and easily,” she said, and could have bitten her tongue out for the words before they had well left her lips.
“I have that reputation,” he said easily, “and I find that a man can’t easily escape that. There are usually plenty of ropes ready for the bad-name dog.”
“What are you gassing about?” broke in Aleck. “Who’s talking of dogs and bad names? Tell Miss Ess you’ll stay, or she’ll be chucking up this trip. And I’m sure she needs it. She’s getting yellow as a duck’s foot.”