She seemed embarrassed and murmured:
“I didn’t think you’d like to hear me.”
“I think you’re sometimes afraid of me,” he said; “is that true?”
She bent her face over the baby and said very low:
“I’m afraid as how you might get mad at me. I don’t know much and—I’m different, and you’ve been more good to me than—”
She stopped, her face hidden over the child. Moreau felt a sudden sense of embarrassed discomfort.
“Oh, don’t talk that way,” he said, hastily, “or I may get mad. That’s the sort of talk that annoys me. Laugh and be happy—that’s the way I want you to be. Enjoy yourself; that’s the way to please me.”
He swung himself down from the knoll into the creek bed and went back to his rocker. He found it hard to collect his thoughts. The music of Lucy’s laugh haunted him.
A week, and then two, passed away. The golden days slipped by, still warm, still scented with the healing pine balsam. The nights were white with great stars, which Moreau could see between the pine boughs, for it was still warm enough to sleep on the knoll. His nights’ rests were now often disturbed. A change had come over the situation in the cabin. The peace and serenity of the first days after Fletcher’s departure had gone, leaving a sense of constraint and uneasiness in their stead. Moreau now looked up at the stars not with the calm content of the days when Lucy had first come, but with the trouble of a man who begins to realize menace in what he thought were harmless things.
Nearly a month had passed since Fletcher’s departure when one day, walking down the stream with an idea of trying diggings farther down, he came upon Lucy washing in a pool of water enlarged by a rough dam she herself had constructed. She was kneeling on a flat stone on the bank, her sunbonnet off, her sleeves rolled up, laving in the water the few articles of dress that made up the baby’s wardrobe. Her arms above the sunburned wrists shone snow-white, her roughened hair lay low on her forehead in damp, curly strands. The sight of her engaged in this menial toil irritated Moreau and he called: