They ran back before it under a blaze of sunshine with the little frothy ripples splashing merrily after them, and then Jimmy had to exert himself again before he could induce Anthea's aunt to believe that it was possible for her niece to be married at two weeks' notice. Still, he accomplished it, and on the fifteenth day he and Anthea Wheelock stood on the platform of a big dusty car as the Pacific express ran slowly into the station at Vancouver.
Leeson stood waiting with Forster, and Jordan was already running toward the car, but Jimmy's lips set tight when he saw Eleanor with Mrs. Forster. In a moment or two Jordan handed Anthea down, and then stood aside as Eleanor came impulsively forward. To her brother's astonishment, she laid her hand on Anthea's shoulder and kissed her on each cheek.
"Now," she said, "you will have to forgive me."
Jimmy did not hear what his wife said, for Mrs. Forster was greeting him, and then Leeson and the rancher seized him; but five minutes later Eleanor stood at his side.
"Yes," she said, "Anthea and I are going to be friends, and you daren't be angry any longer, Jimmy."
They had dropped a little behind the others, who were moving along the wharf, and Jimmy looked at her with a dry smile.
"I'm not," he said. "In fact, I don't think it was my temper that made things unpleasant all the time. Still——"
"You didn't expect me to change?"
Her brother said nothing, and she looked up at him with a softness in her eyes he never remembered seeing there.
"I'm going to marry Charley very soon," she said. "I couldn't have done that while I hated anybody, and, after all, it was Merril who roused—the wild cat—in me, and we have done with him altogether. They wouldn't have him back in Vancouver, but there's a land-boom somewhere in California, and Charley hears that he is already piling up money."