"There's one subject you won't speak to her of, though, Deirdre," he added after a moment's hesitation.
She knew what he meant. He did not want Mrs. Cameron to know that his sight was almost gone.
"Yes, I understand," Deirdre said.
Socks, as sensitive to the keen air, the sunshine, the fluty ripplings and joy-callings of the birds as Deirdre was, rollicked gaily down the track to Cameron's. His white stockings flashed as he thudded along; his unshod hoofs fell with a soft beat on the grassy waysides. Deirdre sang softly to herself as they passed under the arching trees. Her thoughts went drifting away dreamily to the time when Davey would come back and she would call going to Ayrmuir, "going home."
It was an eager, tremulous greeting that Mrs. Cameron gave her.
"It's you, dearie," she said. "I am glad to see you, indeed! What can you tell me of Davey? He was to have come home to us and I haven't seen him for weeks."
There was much to tell and yet much that the girl, in her tender solicitude for Davey's mother, could not tell. It would terrify her to know that someone had shot at and nearly killed him, that Davey had an enemy who would go to these lengths. When he was back with her, he might tell her himself what had kept him away; but it would stretch her soul to the limit of anguish, Deirdre knew, to tell her now.
"Yes, Davey told me he was coming home," Deirdre said, smiling.
Her eyes met Davey's mother's with their secret no secret; but Mary Cameron was thinking only of her boy, and in her anxiety, although she realised that Davey and Deirdre understood each other, she did not ask any questions, and Deirdre said nothing, thinking it was for Davey to tell his mother.
"I knew you'd be anxious about him," the girl said with a sigh, "and that's why I came. He's gone overland with some of Maitland's cattle; but he ought to be back in a week now, and then he'll be coming straight here."