“Certainly, Miss Mary. Anything in this world that I can do for you, I will do. You know that, don’t you?”
“I am all right now. I don’t think I shall get crazy again if you will let me sit here by this window and look out. If I can watch for him, it will give me something to do. You see, I could be watching all the time for the party to come back over that little rise up the road. I want you to promise me,” she went on, steadily, “that I may sit here and wait for you—to come back.”
“God knows you may, little girl, anyway till Doc comes.”
“You are wiser than Doc,” pursued the girl. “He is a good fellow, but foolish, you know, sometimes. He might not understand. He might like to use authority over me because I am his patient—when he did not understand. Promise that I may sit up till you come back.”
“I do promise, little girl. Tell him I said so. Tell him—”
“I will tell him you are—the Boss,” she said, with a pitiful little attempt at a jest, and smiling wanly. “He will mind—the Boss.”
Langford was in agony. Perspiration was springing out on his forehead though August was wearing away peacefully in soft coolness with drifting depths of white cloud as a lounging-robe,—a blessed reprieve from the blazing sun of the long weeks which had gone before.
“And then I want you to promise me,” went on Mary, quietly, “that you will not think any more of staying behind. I could not bear that. I trust you to go. You will, won’t you?”
“Yes, I will go. I will do anything you say. And I want you to believe that everything will be all right. They would not dare to kill him now, knowing that we are after them. If we are not back to-night, you will not worry, will you? They had so much the start of us.”
“I will try not to worry.”