“And I offered to teach her ’seven-up,’ because it was easy,” he remarked grimly. “Yes, the school is best. You see, even if I am on the ground, I’m not a fit guardian. Didn’t I give her leave to get square with the old man? While, if I’d been the right sort of a guardian, she would have been given a moral lecture on the sinfulness of revenge. I guess we’d better begin to talk school right away.”
“I imagine she’ll object at first, through force of habit, and protest that she knows enough for one girl.”
But she did not. She listened with wonder in her eyes, and something of shamed contrition in her face, and knew so well—so very well that she did not deserve it. She had wanted—really wanted to vex him when she played the cards, when she had danced past, and never let on she saw him looking somberly in at the window the night before. But in the light of morning and with the knowledge of his wounded arm, all her resentment was gone. She could scarcely speak even the words she meant to say.
“I can’t do that—go, I mean. It will cost so much, 122 and I have no money. I can’t make any here, and—and you are not rich enough to lend it to me, even if I could pay it back some day, so—”
“Never mind about the money; it will be got. I’m to start up north of this soon, and this doesn’t seem a good place to school you in, anyway. So, for a year or so, you go to that school down in Helena. Max knows the name of it; I forget. When you get all rigged out with an education, and have a capital of knowledge, you can talk then about the money and paying it, if it makes you feel more comfortable. But just now you be a good little girl; go down there with Max to the school, study hard, so that if I drop into a chasm some night, or am picked off by a bullet, you’ll have learned, anyway, how to look after yourself in the right way.”
“Oh, it’s Mr. Max, then, that’s planning this, is it?” she asked suddenly, and her face flushed a little—he must have thought in anger, for he said:
“Why—yes; that is—mostly. You see, ’Tana, I’ve drifted out from the ways of the world while Max has kept up with them. So he proposed—well, no matter about the plan. I’m to suggest it to you, and as it’s no loss and all gain to you, I reckon you’ll be sensible enough to say yes.”
“I will,” she answered, quietly; “it is very kind of you both to be so good to me, for I haven’t been good to you—to either of you, I’m sorry—I—maybe I’ll be better when I come back—and—maybe I can pay you some day.”
“Me? Oh, you won’t owe me anything, and I reckon you’d better not make plans about coming back here! The books and things you learn will likely turn you 123 toward other places—finer places. This is all right for men who have money to make; but you—”
“I’m coming back here,” she said, nodding her head emphatically. “Maybe not for always—but I’ll come back some time—I will.”