“I like them too,” agreed Beatrice. “I don’t understand just how they belong to each other; she says he isn’t really her father.”
“I’ll not forget,” Dr. Minturn began slowly; “I’ll not forget in a long time the day I first saw John Herrick. I was up at the edge of the woods where you found me and he came riding down the trail: had been riding all night or longer than that, perhaps. By the look on his face I could see that black trouble rode behind him and that he had not been able to gallop away from it. I didn’t say much to him, but I brought him home—he and the horse were dead tired—and we got him to stay with us for three days, until that strained look began to disappear from his face. I didn’t know what had happened to him and I didn’t dare to ask. That was ten years ago and I know him nearly as well as I know myself, but I have never asked him yet.”
“And did he have Hester with him then?” Beatrice asked.
“Bless you, no. Hester lived with us. She was born at our house and her mother died there; her father had died before. They were some far kin of Miriam’s, and we kept the baby when the others were gone. Our own two children were grown up and married, so we were glad enough to have her ourselves. She was six years old, a fat, merry little thing, and the way she and John took to each other would do your heart good. He would sit on the door-stone and play with her for hours, or they would take walks together, up and down the rows of pine-trees, the first ones that had been planted then. He came back to see us many times, for he rode back and forth among the mountains, looking at mines, buying up ranches. Everything he touched seemed to prosper, but he never looked happy. It was a whole year after, that he came one day and said he wanted Hester.”
“Oh, how could you give her up?” exclaimed Beatrice.
“I thought I couldn’t,” returned the doctor rather glumly, “and I vowed I wouldn’t, but Miriam said to me, ‘Look at his face, can’t you see how he needs her?’ and of course in the end I had to give in. The care of a small child was really too much for Miriam. If John had not seen that, he would never have asked for her. Herrick is better off than we; he can do a great deal for Hester that we never could. While she has been growing up she has had everything that a sensible rich man’s money could give her. He built that house just for her, and, oh, he is a lonely man in it when she is away at school. She came back to stay with us when he went overseas during the war, but they surely were glad to be together again.”
“And you never knew where he came from?” the girl questioned wonderingly.
“Neither that nor what trouble drove him to our mountains. We don’t go too deep into a man’s past in the West. We like him and stand by him for what he is.”
It was quite dark now, and a white blot, moving through the dusk toward them, proved to be Mrs. Minturn’s gown, as her quiet voice presently proved.
“I am sure the doctor must have told you the history of every tree by now, even to the ones that the badgers dug up and the rows the deer nibbled. It is time you both came in.”