Ross turned to her. “Enderby is the kind of Englishman who wants to adapt himself to new conditions, but can’t.”
“You don’t seem like an Englishman at all.”
“Well, I was caught young, and, besides, I’m really Irish—on my father’s side.”
“Oh, that’s different!” she exclaimed, as though that somehow brought him nearer to her own people.
“It is, isn’t it?” he laughingly agreed. “But Enderby—I suppose his pedigree goes back to Cedric and his swineherds. You can’t change that kind.”
“I hadn’t the least thought of seeing you here. How did you happen to come?”
“Redfield telephoned me at the mill, and I came at once. I haven’t been here since May, and I just thought I’d take a half a day off. Luckily, my understudy was with me. I left him ‘on the job.’”
He did not tell her that she was the principal reason for this sudden descent upon Elk Lodge, and no one but Redfield knew the killing ride he had taken in order to be in at the beginning of the dinner. The girl’s face and voice, especially her voice, had been with him night and day as he went about his solitary duties. Her life problem had come to fill his mind to a disturbing degree, and he was eager to know more of her and of her struggle against the vice and vulgarity of the Forks.
“How is your mother?” he asked, a few minutes later.
“Not at all well. Mr. Redfield is to take the doctor back with us to-morrow.” The ecstasy died out of her face, and the flexible lips drooped with troubled musing. “I am afraid she suffers more than she will admit.”