“You–you’re a ‘trump,’ little niece–letting me have it for-r so long,” he said wistfully.
And Una shyly forbore to answer.
Occasionally it is easier to land gracefully after a long jump than a short one in the case of an awkward gulf to be crossed! She saw that her friend Pemrose, no relation at all to this extraordinary uncle, could care for him and welcome him without embarrassment, while, with every doubtful glance in his direction, she felt, still, as if she did not quite know whether she was on her head or her heels.
She crept, for reassurance, very close to the mountain woman, the typical June woman, with the normal rose in her cheeks, and the golden buttercup for a heart, as she picnicked, subdued, by the trail fire.
“I don’t think–oh! I don’t believe I ever met anybody q-quite like you before. But I’m so glad you’re in the world!” she murmured gratefully.
“And I just wish you could come into my world often, girlie,” was the cuddling answer, “for it’s lonely as old Sarum here on the mountainside–though where old Sarum is I don’t know myself!” breezily.
“Nor I!” laughed Una.
“Old Man Greylock doesn’t talk to one, you know–only roars sometimes.” The woman lifted her eye to the dim peak above her, with the pale mists streaming, tress-like, about its crown, from which Mount Greylock takes its name; then her anxious glance returned to the sufferer. “Ha! there he goes–making faces at the pain again,” she murmured pityingly. “And, mercy! I suppose ’twill be a blue moon yet–a dog’s age–before his son can get here.”
It was a long age anyhow; although, in reality, little more than an hour–a wild, wind-ridden, fire-painted hour–before three haggard men came stumbling up the trail.
Two carried a stretcher between them. One had a bag in his hand.