“You forget, father, that I am nearly seventeen years old.”
“No, I do not; nor do I forget that you are smart for your age. But still I would hate to send you on a journey that might prove full of danger. If their accounts be true, the road is a perilous one, and the mining districts are full of rough characters.”
“After I left San Francisco I could go well armed. I don’t think it would be so dangerous. A good class of settlers are pouring into the place, and they would surely not molest me. You must remember that things are not as they were at the close of the war.”
“What you say is true, Oliver; but I would hate to send you into the midst of danger, however slight. If you were only going to San Francisco it would be different. But to go away up in the mountains, and utterly alone”—
Mr. Bright did not finish, a violent twitch of pain stopping him short. Seeing that his father could not stand conversing, Oliver withdrew.
He ascended to his own room, and, taking a chair by the window, sat down to think. For fully half an hour he did not move. Then he went below and made his way to the kitchen, where Mrs. Hanson was preparing some broth for the sick man.
“Mrs. Hanson,” he said, calling her aside, “father was planning to go on a journey, and now that he can’t go, I’ve been thinking of going for him without letting him know—that is, for several days. Do you think you could get along without me while I am gone?”
“Why, bless you, Oliver, yes! I’ve been a nurse these ten years before I was a housekeeper. It will be no trouble whatever.”
“And you will not let him know that I have gone—that is, for a few days? It might only worry him.”
“If you wish it.”