So Ess went with Mrs. Dan and swallowed the food they gave her, and let Mrs. Dan help her to undress and bathe and to stumble into bed, with the sleep closing her eyes before she had lain down. She slept there for a solid twelve hours, and never even heard her uncle come in and stand looking at her with wet eyes, or felt the kiss he dropped lightly on her cheek.
Mrs. Dan woke her at last, and gave her food and warm soup, and made her lie down again, although she protested that she was all right now and had slept enough. And even as she protested her eyes closed drowsily, and she snuggled back in the warm blankets, and was asleep again in five minutes.
Mrs. Dan seized the chance thrown to her hand by Scottie’s call, and proceeded to make the most of it and to extract some information to work on. But she could hardly have found a man so hard to fossick anything from. Scottie was not given to gossip or idle talk at any time, and the merest suspicion that he was being pumped was enough to re-double his native caution.
Mrs. Dan talked first about the flood and the damage it had caused, and the good the rain had done the country. She passed from that on to the narrow escape Ess and Dolly had had, and how thankful she was they had been found in time.
Scottie thanked her and thanked her again for her kindness in taking Ess in. Mrs. Dan seized the opening.
“I could never let a pretty young girl like that go to an hotel by herself,” she said warmly, “and of course we didn’t know when you’d be in again. But there’s nothing to thank me for. It’s glad I am to have her, and I took to her the first minute I set eyes on her.” She laughed lightly. “But it’s not me or you will have the keeping of her long, Mr. Mackellar—she’s too pretty a face for that.”
Scottie murmured something unintelligible into his teacup. (Mrs. Dan had made him wait to drink a cup of tea, and took care to give it to him scalding hot, so that he could not be too quick over it and go before she had pumped him dry).
“And didn’t I hear some word of her being engaged already?” she asked. This was a pure shot in the dark, except for the half light she had from Steve’s remarks about the girl he had lost being engaged.
“She was—she’s not now,” said Scottie, briefly. This did not help much, for she did not know if the engagement referred to was to Steve or the other man.
“That might be as good a thing as it might be a bad,” she said. “There’s only one thing worse for a girl than breaking her engagement, and that’s keeping to it—if they’re not likely to be well matched.”