“I love you, Justin; I love you!”
Justin clasped her tightly in his strong arms.
“I love you, too!” he declared, and kissed her.
Standing by while he held Helen thus, Pearl, with a touch that was almost motherly, pushed the clustering dark locks back from his forehead, revealing the scar of a burn. She gave it a little love pat.
“You won’t mind?” she said, and to Justin’s surprise her voice choked with a sudden rush of tears. “You seem almost like my own boy, Justin. You weren’t much more than a boy, you know, when you first came to the ranch; and I can’t help remembering how you got that scar. I wanted to see if it had gone away any.”
Harkness coughed suspiciously.
“If you ever git married, and your wife pulls out so much of your hair that you’re bald-headed, that scar’s goin’ to show,” he said.
Pearl caught Helen out of Justin’s lap, with sudden agitation.
“Helen, you’re getting dirt all over Justin’s nice new clothes!” With bare plump hand she brushed away some infinitesimal specks which Helen’s shoes had left. “I ought to have looked at her shoes before I put her up there! Why didn’t you tell me to, Steve? Helen, you’ll never be a lady, unless you keep your shoes clean.”
“All them heroes and hero-wines of Pearl’s keeps their shoes ferever spick an’ span an’ shinin’,” said Harkness. “People always do, you’ll notice, in books; at least them she reads about do. She was readin’ a book yisterday, and I looked at the picture of the hero. He had boots on that come to his thighs, and they’d jist been blacked. And the women in them books wear more fine clothes than you could find in a milliner’s shop.”