"Kitty is mad and I am glad,
For I know how to please her;
A bottle of wine to make her shine
And a nice young man to squeeze her!"
"You're horrid!" cried Kitty, frowning and blushing.
"Give me the specifications," Bill went on, with an air of serious gravity. "Blond, brunette, or albino? Heavy, welter, or light weight? Kind of disposition you prefer, and amount of purse to be put up before you enter the ring? I'll bring the candidate back with me if I have to sandbag him!"
Kitty retired into the house, slamming the door. Bill, with a whoop, started up the trail after his horses.
When the cabin was put to rights there was nothing more that Kitty was obliged to do until it was time to start the supper. On such occasions she was accustomed to help her father in the "works," as they called the other shack, but the furnaces had been cold for a week now, while all hands joined to get out enough ore to keep them fed while the boys were away. There was plenty of work that Kitty might have done, but she was in a mood to dream and to nourish her grievances. She might have gone up to the excavation to help, but she dreaded male raillery. She finally turned in the other direction and followed the path down to the river.
It ended in a little glade that had been a camping-place since time out of mind. In the middle of the place was a fire-hole, centuries old, maybe. Upright posts were driven on either side, with a bar across and wooden hooks of assorted sizes waiting for the bails of the next traveller's pots. In front of Kitty as she stood beside the fireplace the river stretched its smooth jade-green flood across to the base of the mountain opposite, and at her left hand the limpid waters of the creek mingled with the thicker current.
Below the camping-place stretched a bank of fine yellow sand precipitated by the eddies in times of high water. Partly drawn up on the sand was a dugout. The Sholtos kept their two boats cached in the creek, but this one had been got out in preparation for the journey next day. It was the happy-go-lucky Bill who had left it where it was without tying it, forgetful of the sudden rises of the river in hot weather.
Kitty got in the dugout, and sat down in the stern, where she might trail her hands in the water, while she thought things out and dreamed her dreams. All unwittingly Bill had discovered to her the very source of her discontent, and she was disturbed and ashamed. It was true that she wanted a young man! Here she was twenty years old; it was jocularly granted by her brothers that she was not exactly a fright; yet she had never had a young man. What was worse there was no young man, at least of her own colour, within hundreds of miles, and she was doomed to her present imprisonment for at least another year. Twenty-two loomed ahead like old age itself. "What chance will I have then!" she thought dejectedly. Behind this was the hot-cheeked, nagging thought: what business had a nice girl to be desiring a young man, anyway!
But after a while the lovely afternoon began to have its way with her, and the disquieting thoughts melted by imperceptible degrees into deceitful, charming daydreams. She was lying in the bottom of the boat with her arm on the gunwale, and her head on her arm. Her eyes were bent upstream as far as she could see. He will come down the river, she dreamed. "Perhaps he is just around the bend at this moment. I should not be surprised. But what if he should come when I am not here, and be carried past! That is not possible! If he is the right one, some power will lead him directly to me! What is he like? Tall and slender, with round, strong arms, and a wonderful light in his eyes. He will not be surprised to see me either. He will say: 'I have found you!' And I will say quite simply: 'I have been waiting for you,' and everything will be understood."
Following the usual course of day-dreams, Kitty little by little lost the direction of this beautiful story, and picture began to succeed picture without any help from her. She found herself climbing the higher slopes of Mount Milburn hand in hand with the youth whose face was hidden from her; up into the intoxicating air of the summits. Then presto! without so much of an effort as the wink of an eyelid they were transported to the busy streets of town, and looked into the bewildering shop-windows without any surprise at all. Then they walked between endless rows of silk dresses hung on hooks, and all the dresses were hers, but she couldn't decide which one she liked the best, and was much distressed. And he said: "Don't worry; I have a paper boat to sail down Milburn Creek in." And she answered: "We'll never get up again," without caring in the least. And then they danced to delicious music that issued from a row of trees like the pipes of an organ.