"Four of them?" she said. "You haven't dropped any?"
Jordan did not think he had, and the girl pressed one or two of the parcels between her fingers. "Then I wonder where the muslin is?"
"I guess they can tell me in the store," said Jordan.
He swung around, and in a moment or two was back at the counter. The clerk there, however, had to refer to one of her companions, and, as the latter was busy, Jordan had to wait a minute or two.
"I wrapped up the muslin with the trimming," she said at last. "Miss Wheelock had four parcels, and I saw you take up all of them."
Jordan turned away with an unpleasant thought in his mind, and was out of the store in a moment. There was, however, no wagon in the street, and after running down most of it he stopped with a harsh laugh. Forster's team was a fast one, and Jordan realized that it was very unlikely that he could overtake it, especially when Eleanor, who usually drove, did not wish him to. After all, her quickness and resolution in one way appealed to him, and he remembered that he had promised to dine with Austerly that evening. Still, he went back to his business feeling a trifle sore, and one or two of the men who called on him noticed that his temper was considerably shorter than usual.
He had, in fact, not altogether recovered his customary good-humor when he sat on the veranda of Austerly's house some hours later. The meal which Austerly insisted on calling dinner, though he had found it impossible to get anybody to prepare it later than seven o'clock in the evening, was over, and the rest of the few guests were scattered about the garden. Valentine, who had arrived in the Sorata a day or two earlier, sat at the foot of the short veranda stairway close by the lounge chair where Nellie Austerly lay looking unusually fragile, but listening to the bronzed man with a quiet smile. Austerly leaned on the balustrade, and Anthea sat not far from Jordan. She was, as it happened, looking out through a gap in the firs which afforded her a glimpse of the shining Inlet. A schooner crept slowly across the strip of water, on her way to the frozen north with treasure-seekers.
"She seems very little," said Anthea. "One wonders whether she will get there, and whether the men on board her will ever come back again."
"The chances are against it," said Austerly. "It is a long way to St. Michael's, and one understands that those northern waters are either wrapped in fog or swept by sudden gales. Besides that, it must be a tremendous march or canoe trip inland, and before they reach the gold region the summer will be over. One would scarcely fancy that many of them could live out the winter. In fact, it seems to me scarcely probable that the Yukon basin will ever become a mining district. Nature is apparently too much for the white man there. What is your opinion, Jordan?"
Jordan smiled, though there was a snap in his eyes.