The young man and woman were introduced by the child, who, then relieved of responsibility, left them to each other's mercy, and flew to a friend with whom she had been playing dolls on the back porch.
"I don't suppose you remember me," said Miss Sara Wilkins rather wistfully. "But I remember you very well."
"So do I you," Nick was glad to reply with truth; and his heart warmed to the wisp of a woman to whom Miss Dene had been catty and Mrs. May kind. "It was at Santa Barbara."
"Why, you do remember!" she exclaimed delightedly. "I never thought you would. I always think there's nothing about me that any one could recollect. Oh, would you mind telling me how that lovely lady is who was so good to me? I often think about her. She was the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life."
Nick could have kissed her hands—little thin hands—kissed them even in their gray lisle-thread gloves; Needless to say, however, he did nothing of the sort. He answered quietly that it was now some time since he had seen Mrs. May, but he supposed she was well, and still in California, probably in San Francisco. She was planning to build a house near Monterey. Though his voice and manner were particularly calm, his eyes were as wistful, perhaps, as the school-teacher's smile had been. And just because Sara Wilkins knew well what it was to be wistful and try to hide it, perhaps she saw more clearly than a more attractive woman would. "Something had happened," she said to herself. That splendid young couple, about whom she had built up such a gorgeous romance, had been parted, and this handsome fellow with the kind smile and heroic shoulders was unhappy, far unhappier than Sara Wilkins had ever been, strange as that might seem—he who had looked so fortunate! Sara wondered if the lovely lady were unhappy, too, or if she had been cruel; and because Miss Wilkins adored romance (having nothing more personally her own to adore), not because she was naturally curious, the little woman positively ached to know the story.
They had nearly half an hour together she and Nick before Mrs. Kenealy returned, and in that time they had come close to the beginning of a friendship, each being secretly in need of sympathy, and dimly detecting the need in the other. Their liking for one another enchanted Mrs. Kenealy, who was a born matchmaker. To be sure, Miss Sara Wilkins was not pretty, and would never see twenty-nine again, but she was a good girl, clever and affectionate, and would make Nick Hilliard the best of wives if only he could be brought to see it. She sat between them, chattily telling each one nice things about the other, and soon she suggested bringing Miss Wilkins to visit Nick's ranch. School was off now, and the poor dear had nothing to do but read and write letters home, whither it cost far too much to return for only a few weeks. Nick said that he would be delighted; and offered to send Miss Wilkins as many books as she liked to her boarding house. Books were great friends of his, he admitted somewhat shyly. She was welcome to borrow any she cared to have.
They saw a good deal of each other during the next fortnight, too much for the school-teacher's peace of mind; for the oftener they met the more was she convinced that Nick was in love, perhaps hopelessly in love, with another woman as different from herself as a lily from a dusty sprig of lavender. Then, one day when Nick had started to carry her some books and they had met on the way, the two sat down and talked by the side of the blue, brackish lake, sheltering from the sun behind a bank of yellow sand that was like the high back of a queerly shaped throne. At a distance passed Green, the landlord of the Eureka, out walking with his little daughter, and in speaking of him and the odd folk who stopped at the green hotel the "Dook" was mentioned. He had disappeared from Lucky Star City some time before, but Miss Wilkins had met and disliked him.
"Horrid little pretentious toad!" she exclaimed sharply. "He was always talking to every one he could get hold of about his family and his swell friends and Oxford. But I don't believe any of his stories. He was just worse than nobody at all; and East I've met real nice Englishmen who had a lovely accent, and wouldn't be found dead drawling like he did."
Nick laughed. "You're jolly right," he said; and then being in a humorous as well as confidential mood, he told the story of himself and Montagu Jerrold.
"Wasn't I a Johnny?" he asked at the end. "Served me right for trying to make a silk purse of myself. Can't be done, I guess."