"Well, whatever I can do, ma'am, I'm anxious to do," he said, repressing himself that he might not give ground to the suspicion that he was forcing himself on her, though his first impulse was to take her affairs in hand and shield her from the trying circumstances which were bound to follow. "I can't do much to help you, but all I can do—"
"I don't think I could do anything without you," she said, simply, letting her gaze travel over his big frame. "It's so far away, out here, from anyone I know or the things I am accustomed to. It's ... it's too wonderful, finding someone out here who understands Ned, when even his own people back home didn't. I wonder ... is it asking too much to ask you to help me plan? You know people and conditions. I don't."
She made the request almost timidly, but he leaped at the opportunity and cried:
"If I can help you, if I could be of use to you, I'd think it was th' finest thing that ever happened to me, ma'am. I've never been of much use to anybody but myself. I ... I'd like to help you!" His manner was so wholly boyish that she impulsively put out her hand to him.
"You're kind to me, so...."
She lost the rest of the sentence because of the fierceness with which he grasped her proffered hand and for a moment his gray eyes burned into hers with confusing intensity. Then he straightened and looked away with an inarticulate word.
"Well, what do you want to do?" he asked, stepping to one side to bring a chair for her.
"I don't know; he's in a frightful ... I've never seen him as bad as this,"—her voice threatening to break.
"An' he'll be that way so long as he's near that!"
He held his hand up in a gesture that impelled her to listen as the notes from the saloon piano drifted into the little room.