“It is all right, Mr. Harker,” he said, singling out the conductor. “I mean, we are all out. There was no one else in the car except the porter, and he isn’t hurt.”
They made their way through the throng of curious ones, and so on down the track to the train. Brant found a seat in the day coach, disposed his charge comfortably therein, and then, once more laying hold of his courage, sat down beside her.
“I am not going to leave you again until I see you safe in Denver,” he asserted; “that is, unless you send me away.”
“I didn’t send you away this morning,” she rejoined, with a smile that went far toward making him forget for the moment who and what he was.
“I know you didn’t; but you had a right to. And after what I had done, there was nothing for it but to take myself off.”
She did not speak until the train was once more lurching on its way. Then she said: “I thought at the time you were very patient; and—and I think so still.”
“Do you, really? That is very good of you; but I think I don’t deserve it. My first thought should have been for you, and I might have kept my temper for another half minute.”
Now this young woman could rejoice in an excellent upbringing, as will presently appear, and she knew perfectly well that Brant was right. But where is the woman, old or young, who does not secretly glory in a vigorous championship of her rights, even at the expense of the proprieties?
So she spoke him fair, telling him that she was sending for him at the moment of the accident to thank him and to pay him for her supper. Nay, more: she made the next two hours so pleasant for him that they were as but a watch in the night, and their flitting seemed to push his life in the camps into a comfortably remote past.
And so they chatted amicably until the outlying lights of Denver began to flash past the windows; and then Brant bethought him of her further well-being.