"Then we'll go—home," she murmured.
In his blundering way he understood, and stooped to pat her bent head.
"'Home!'" he whispered. "'Home!' If your mother could be here! . . .
I know what she'd say. 'Jim,' she'd say, 'you've done well.' . . .
I'd like to hear it, little girl. 'Jim.'"
"Is it so much nicer than 'daddy'?" she asked jealously; she had had this big loving man so long to herself.
He dropped to the doorsteps and reached back to throw an arm over her shoulders.
"Some day, little girl, you'll know what the one voice, the one word, means. . . . If I were dying, 'Jim' would call me back—as it seems to call me on—-from somewhere now. . . . 'Jim.'"
Conrad found them thus, the man's great arm laid lightly across the girl's shoulders, her head sunk in his neck; both staring through the dusk to the mazy tangle of timbers that had been their season's care. The foreman silently drew a chair to the other side of the girl and took her hand in his.
Presently Torrance stirred, diving into his pocket in search of a host's tobacco pouch.
"Thursday," he said, handing it to Conrad.
Conrad nodded.