“That is because I was so confused,” whispered poor Loseis. She suddenly covered her face with her hands. “Oh, what will he be thinking of me!” she groaned.
Mary-Lou’s eyes were all sympathy; but she could think of nothing to say.
Loseis drifted back to the window, where she stood with her back to Mary-Lou. After awhile, without turning around, she said in an offhand, experimental sort of voice: “I have a good mind to see him again.”
Mary-Lou merely gasped.
“Oh, not meaning anything in particular,” Loseis said quickly. “There never could be anything between us. But just to show him that I am not a redskin, and then leave him.”
“How could you see him?” faltered Mary-Lou.
“He is camped with his outfit alongside the Limestone Rapids, one hundred miles down,” Loseis went on in that offhand voice. “He has to break the rocks with a hammer, and study them where they split. It is what they call a geologist. . . .” Her assumed indifference suddenly collapsed. “Let us go to see him, Mary-Lou,” she blurted out breathlessly. “We could make it in a long day’s paddling with the current; three days to come back if we worked hard. We wouldn’t let him know we had come to see him. We would say we were hunting. . . .”
“Oh! . . . Oh! . . .” gasped Mary-Lou. “Girls do not hunt.”
“He doesn’t know what I do!” cried Loseis. “I must see him! It kills me to have him thinking that I am a common, ignorant sort of girl! Let us start at daybreak to-morrow!”
“Oh, no! no!” whispered Mary-Lou, paralyzed by the very thought. “Blackburn . . . Blackburn . . . !”