“Never,” said Toppy.
“I’ll give you ‘Davis on Fractures’ to read up on,” said Reivers with a laugh. “I think I’ll appoint you M.D. to this camp. ‘Doctor Treplin.’ How would that be?”
His careless laughter came floating back as he made his way swiftly to the stockade.
For a moment Toppy stood irresolute. Then he did something that required more courage from him than anything he had done before in his life. He stepped boldly across the hallway and entered the office, closing the door behind him.
CHAPTER VI—“NICE BOY!”
“Miss Pearson!” Toppy spoke as he crossed the threshold; then he stopped short.
The girl was sitting in a big chair before a desk in the farther corner of the room. She was dressed just as she had been on the drive; she had not removed cap, coat or gloves since arriving. Her hands lay palms up in her lap, her square little shoulders sagged, and her face was pale and troubled. A tiny crease of worry had come between her wonderful blue eyes, and her gaze wandered uncertainly, as if seeking help in the face of a problem that had proved too hard for her to handle alone. At the sight of Toppy, instead of giving way to a look of relief, her troubled expression deepened. She started. She seemed even to shrink from him. The words froze in Toppy’s mouth and he stood stock-still.
“Don’t!” he groaned boyishly. “Please don’t look at me like that, Miss Pearson! I—I’m not that sort. I want to help you—if you need it. I heard what Reivers just said. I——What do you take me for, anyhow? A mucker who would force himself upon a lady?”
The anguish in his tone and in his honest, good-natured countenance was too real to be mistaken. He had cried out from the depths of a clean heart which had been stirred strangely, and the woman in the girl responded with quick sympathy. She looked at him with a look that would have aroused the latent manhood in a cad—which Toppy was not—and Toppy, in his eagerness, found that he could look back.
“Why did you come out here?” she asked plaintively. “Why did you decide to follow me, after you had heard that I was coming here? I know you did that; you hadn’t intended coming here until you heard. What made you do it?”