There was a shade of anxiety on the boy’s freckled face. “Pa’s been took queer this very day,” he said looking up toward the cabin as though he feared he might be overheard, “and Ma says now with the water most gone, she just doesn’t know what we are to do. There weren’t any late rains and the cistern’s most empty.”
“Dear boy, your mother must not worry about that. There’s plenty of water at V. M. and you are welcome to all you can carry.” But the girl’s heart was heavy for even as she made the offer, she knew that there would be no convenient way of packing water so many miles across the desert.
Having dismounted on the small flat space which served as a dooryard, the others turned anxiously to Virg. “Ought we to remain,” Annette Traylor inquired. “If the Wallaces have this new trouble, we might be intruding.”
But Gordon stepped forward and said earnestly, “Miss Virginia, I would like to meet Mr. Wallace. I believe that I can be of service to him.”
Mrs. Wallace, more pale and fragile than when Virg had gone east to school, appeared in the doorway and Virginia went forward to greet her. The girls saw her bend and kiss the sunken cheek and were touched at the light of tenderness in the face of the older woman.
It was evident that the girl was inquiring about poor Mr. Wallace. “I don’t know what has happened exactly. Something that discouraged him so much that he just gave up and ever since he’s sat there in his chair around on the north side of the cabin and staring into space, though once in a while he does say something, but it’s about his instrument and I don’t understand.”
Meanwhile Gordon had seen the listless figure of the man, and, with an earnest desire to be of service, he had walked toward him.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Wallace,” the boy said, hoping to attract the attention of the inventor, but the dreamy grey-blue eyes of the thin, kindly-faced man did not move from what seemed to be one definite spot farther up the canon.
The boy, noting that the girls had gone in the cabin with the mother, sat on a rock near to wait until a more opportune moment to again address the man who seemed deep in thought.
At last, in a voice that seemed infinitely sad, the inventor spoke. “I’ve failed! I was so sure it could be done, but now, I know the truth. I’ve failed!”