She followed his gesture. To her intense mortification she saw the blue smoke of her home campfire flaunting up from a gully not half a mile away. It was her turn to droop now. She drooped.
There was a painful silence. Then, in a far-off, hard, judicial tone:
“How long, ma’am, if I may ask, have you known that the little black horse was tangled up?”
Miss Ellinor’s eyes shifted wildly. She broke a twig from a mahogany bush and examined the swelling buds with minutest care.
“Well?” said her ruthless inquisitor sternly.
“Since—since I went for your hat,” she confessed in a half whisper.
“To deceive me so!” Pain, grief, surprise, reproach, were in his words. “Have you anything to say?” he added sadly.
A slender shoe peeped out beneath her denim skirt and tapped on a buried boulder. Ellinor regarded the toetip with interest and curiosity. Then, half-audibly:
“We were having such a good time.... And it might never happen again!”