Again the dewy eyes were downcast. “Jeanie doesn’t talk ve’y much about herself; I reckon—I mean, I think you know that. Sometimes I surmise she cares a heap about him, and sometimes I just don’t know.” Then with a naïveté which stepped well back into childhood: “I don’t think they’d be ve’y happy together; do you?”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know; maybe it’s just because Mr. Philip is so sort of don’t-touch-me good; sort of Yankee-good, ain’t—isn’t it?”
Since the Philip of the present moment was neither “Yankee-good” nor any other kind, Bromley’s reply to the innocent question was strictly aphoristic.
“When you grow up to be a woman, Mysie, you will know that men are never any too good,” he returned gravely; at which, declining a second cup of coffee, he went away before he should be tempted to say more.
Turning up at Madame Marchande’s at noon, he found that Jean had been given a half-holiday, on account of the slack midsummer season, and had gone home. After he thought he had given her time enough to eat her luncheon, he hired a horse and buggy for the afternoon and drove over to the cottage in West Denver.
“Get your things on and come along with me for a ride,” he invited, when Jean came out to pet the little white mare from the livery stable. “I want to have a talk with you.”
“Is it about Philip?” she asked; and when he made the sign of assent, she went in to get her coat and hat.
For the time it took the smart little mare to whisk them across the bridge over the Platte, and up to the farther heights on the north side overlooking the final undulations of the great plain rolling up in swelling land waves to break against Castle Rock and Table Mountain, the driving of the spirited little horse gave Bromley an excuse for postponing the thankless task he had set himself. On the watershed height between the Platte and Clear Creek, in sight of the great house that “Brick” Pomeroy had built, or had begun to build, in the flush times of the Clear Creek mining boom, there was a tiny lake, tree-shadowed, and on its shore he drove in among the cottonwoods and got out and hitched the mare.
“I’ve been wanting to show you this glorious view,” he said, as he helped his companion out of the high, side-bar buggy. “Is there anything to match it in Mississippi?”