“I was just going to say——” Susan considered a moment and then said firmly: “He was glad to see us because there was something about those cattle he hadn’t told her. Didn’t you see the look on her face?”
“That wouldn’t make no difference with th’ way he’d do by us. ’E was as glad as could be, an’ asked you t’ come back ’s if you’d been ’is mother. It’s some stuck-up notion of hers—this thing of them not visitin’ their neighbours.”
Susan looked up at him indulgently.
“You won’t refuse to be good friends with her—for my sake, Nate. She was as glad to see me as a little child.”
“Why don’t she come t’ see you then?” Nathan asked sternly, able only to see the one point.
“I don’t exactly know, Nate. I couldn’t crowd her on that matter—she looked so worried when I brought it up that I just let it go. I only know she wants to come.”
They dropped the subject and rode along over the smooth road, too absorbed in their own thoughts to get pleasure out of this last sleighride of the season, both endeavoring to solve the problem from their own viewpoint, Nathan full of distrust and suspicion, his wife too well versed in human nature to doubt Elizabeth’s honesty or believe that she was spoiled by a fine home or an advanced social position. At last she spoke her conclusions:
“There’s something in her face I like better’n ever, but there’s a worried something there I don’t like to see.”
Nathan was sorry he had criticised Elizabeth. Sue loved the girl. Nathan and Susan discussed, but never argued. If Susan remained of her first opinion after talking a thing over, Nathan conceded within himself that she had some good reason for her convictions even where he could not agree.
“Sue ’ll have t’ see it for herself,” he meditated. “I’d be glad t’ see ’er right. We’ll see how it turns out.” But as he tried to get himself into that frame of mind he remembered how many days had been spoiled for his wife that winter because she longed for Elizabeth, and he involuntarily muttered: