As she stood now close to him—the red blood glowing under the soft brown of her cheeks—Willard Holmes felt her rich personality as distinctly as one senses the presence of the ocean, the atmosphere of the woods or the air of meadows and fields. But by all his conventional gods, this was the unconventional limit! that this girl, the daughter of a banker, should openly seek out a total stranger to introduce herself to him on the public street before a crowd of hotel loungers! And the way she spoke of those rough men in the saloon, one would think they were her intimate friends.
He managed to say: "Really, I am delighted, Miss Worth. May I escort you to the hotel parlor?"
She looked at him curiously. "Oh, no indeed! It is much nicer out here in the arcade, don't you think? But you may bring another chair." Dumbly he obeyed, feeling that every eye was on him and flushing with embarrassment for her.
"When Texas and Pat told me that you were one of the engineers going out with The King's Basin party I could scarcely wait to see you. It makes it all seem so real, you know—your coming all the way out here from New York. I have dreamed so much about the reclamation of The King's Basin Desert; and you see I consider all civil engineers my personal friends."
"Indeed," he said. It is always safely correct to say "indeed" as he said it, particularly when you have nothing else to say.
She regarded him doubtfully with an open, straight-forward look which was somewhat disconcerting. She was so unconscious of the strength of her splendid womanhood and he felt her presence so vividly.
"I suppose you must find everything out here very strange," she said slowly. "Father says this is your first visit to the West and of course it can't be like your part of the country."
"It is all very interesting," he murmured. This also was sane and safe.
"I know that Abe is very busy and father never leaves the bank except on business, so there is no one but me to look after you"—she smiled—"that is—no one of our King's Basin people."
Willard Holmes was of that type of corporation servant who recognizes no interests but the financial interests of the capital employing him. His services as a civil engineer belonged wholly to those who bought them for their own profit. Barbara's innocent words aroused him. What the deuce did she mean by "our King's Basin people"? Greenfield and his friends thought that they were The King's Basin people. In the interests of his employers he must look into this.