"Dearest dear, let me in. Trust me. Tell me where it hurts. Let me mother you."
"There, there, dear! Everything is all right. Lay me down again and be easy in that mind of yours."
But once more on the pillow she had to endure again the girl's accusing eyes.
"Nell, someone hasn't loved you enough. That's what I feel. Who is it?"
"Nonsense! You're only worried because I'm a little run down. Everyone loves me enough—all I deserve. There, dear, I think I can rest." The girl kissed her shut eyes, and went out, after a long, doubting look. The sick woman raised her arms once, like a child who would be taken, but they fell back, and she painfully laughed the old low laugh of secrecy.
She mused on her brother's words. "A little rest." Yes, a rest. "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep." She remembered now that it would come to her in the shelter of those hills, perhaps in that room to which her thoughts had flown so many times, where she had seen the awakening man in the sleeping boy, and caught misty shadowings of the portent he bore for her. Her eyes might fall before his now, but they need not fall before the eyes of his mother.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE HILLS OF REST
BEN Crider waited for them on the station platform at Pagosa. He was excited to a point of feverish unrest until the train warned its way out of the last cañon. Then, by a masterful effort, he became elaborately nonchalant. That train had brought Ewing back to him, but he constrained himself to handle the occasion as one rising hardly to common levels. He would have considered any other demeanor "shameless."
He nodded to Bartell, who supported his sister from the car, and stared politely at the pretty but anxious-looking girl who followed them. But when Ewing appeared, burdened with handbags, Ben ignored him, and rushed to shake the hand of Beulah Pierce, returning from a three-days' trip to Durango. So effusive was his greeting that Pierce mentally convicted him of having lingered at the "Happy Days" bar for one too many drinks, and broke from his affectionate grasp with some embarrassment.