"You get used to it. And then every few months you would tramp into the homestead and—and speak to the boss," said Jack, changing his mind and his sentence as he remembered how he had once shocked Claude Lafont.
Olivia took notice of the cats, at which Jack stood by beaming. The kitten she had brought down from town in a basket. It lived in Olivia's room, but she now suggested restoring it to its own people. Jack, however, reminded her that it was hers, in such a tender voice; and proceeded to refer to her kindness at their first meeting, in so embarrassing a fashion; that the girl, seeking a change of subject, found one in the long, low bunk.
"I see," said she, "that you come here for your afternoon siesta."
"I come here for my night's sleep," he replied.
"Never!"
"Every night in life. You seem surprised. I did ask old Claude not to mention it—and—oh, well, it's no use keeping the thing a secret, after all. It suits me best—the open country and the solitude. It's what I'm accustomed to. The wind in the pines all around, I wake up and hear it every night, just like I did in the old hut. It's almost the same thing as going back to the bush to sleep; there's not two penn'orth of difference."
"You'd like to go back altogether," said the girl, affirming it as a fact; and yet her sweet eyes, gravely unsatisfied, seemed to peer through his into his soul.
"I don't say that, Miss Sellwood," he protested. "Of course it's a great thing for me to have come in for all this fortune and power—and it'll be a greater thing still once I can believe it's true! That's the trouble. The whole show's so like a dream. And that's where this little hut helps me; it's real, anyway; I can sight it. As for all the rest, it's too many measles for me—as yet; what's more, if I was to wake up this minute on Carara I shouldn't so very much mind."
"I wonder," said Olivia, with her fine eyes looking through him still. "I just wonder!" And her tone set him wondering too.
"Of course," he faltered, "I should be mighty sorry to wake up and find I'd only dreamt you!"