And in Lois Ann’s cabin Nella-Rose waited, at first with serene hope, and then, with pitiful longing. She and the old woman never referred to the conversation of the first night but the girl was sure she was being watched and shielded and she felt the doubt and scorn in the attitude of Lois Ann.
“I’ll—I’ll send for my man,” at last she desperately decided at the end of the second week. But she dared not risk a journey to the far station in order to send a telegram. So she watched for a chance to send a letter that she had carefully and painfully written.
“I’m to Miss Lois Ann’s in Devil-may-come Hollow. I’m trusting and loving you, but Miss Lois Ann—don’t believe! So please, Mister Man come and tell her and then go back and I will wait—most truly
Your Nella-Rose.”
then she crossed the name out and scribbled “Your doney-gal.”
It was early in the third week that Bill Trim came whistling down the trail, on a cold, bitterly cold, November morning. He bore a load of “grateful gifts” to Lois Ann from men and women whom she had succoured in times of need and who always remembered her, practically, when winter “set.”
Bill was a half-wit but as strong as an ox; and, once set upon a task, managed it in a way that had given him a secure position in the community. He carried mail into the remotest districts—when there was any to carry. He “toted” heavy loads and gathered gossip and spilled it liberally. He was impersonal, ignorant, and illiterate, but he did his poor best and grovelled at the feet of any one who showed him the least affection. He was horribly afraid of Lois Ann for no reason that he could have given; he was afraid of her eyes—her thin, claw-like hands. As he now delivered the bundles he had for her he accepted the food she gave and then darted away to eat it in comfort beyond the reach of those glances he dreaded.
And there Nella-Rose sought him and sat beside him with a choice morsel she had saved from her finer fare.
“Trim,” she whispered when he was about to start, “here is a letter—Miss Lois Ann wants you to mail.”
The bright eyes looked yearningly into the dull, hopeless face.