“I might help you.”
“How?”
“In ways that friends can help each other.”
“I’ve tried that,” she answered dryly.
“You’ve grown so self-sufficient that you make me feel superfluous and helpless.”
“A clinging vine that has nothing to cling to sprawls on the ground, doesn’t it?”
Since he did not answer immediately, she reminded him:
“Better loosen your horse’s cinch; he’ll feed better.”
He glanced at her oddly as he obeyed her. How practical she was! What she said was the right and sensible thing, of course, but was she, as she seemed, quite without sentiment?
He returned to his place beside her and they sat without speaking, watching the colors change on a bank of sudslike clouds and the shadows deepen in the gulches. It never occurred to the new Kate to make conversation, so she was unembarrassed by the silence. Save for an occasional whimsical soliloquy, she seldom spoke without a definite purpose nowadays. To Disston, who remembered her faculty for finding something interesting or amusing in everything about which to chatter, the difference was noticeable.