"Well, it was the rough course of true love over again. Between the father and the sister the match was broken off, and before things could be reconciled the girl's father forced the marriage of his daughter to a worthless scamp who posed as a rich man, or an heir expectant to riches. The Ekblads are hard-working farmer folk. When it was too late the misunderstanding was cleared up. The rich fellow soon proved a fraud and a rascal and a wife-deserter. And the girl came home with her baby. Her father, as I said, was too stingy to hire help. So this girl-mother overworked in threshing-time, and—was buried this afternoon up the Sage Brush—old man Poser's daughter, Nell Belkap. The Ekblads have just come from the funeral. Old Poser has refused to care for Nell's baby and intended to put it in an orphan asylum. Thelma Ekblad brought it home with her. It was in her arms just now, and she's going to keep it and adopt it. When she's away at school—she has a year yet before she graduates—that crippled brother, Paul, will take care of it. All of which is out of your line, Jerry, but interesting to us in the valley here."
As York paused and looked at Jerry, all that Stellar Bahrr had said of him and the Poser girl swept through her mind. Not the least meanness of a lie is in its infectious poisoning power.
"It is very interesting. I wonder how she can take care of that baby. Babies are so impossible," Jerry said, musingly.
"We were all impossibles once. Some of us are still improbables," York replied.
Jerry looked up at him quickly. "Not altogether hopeless, maybe. Thelma is doing this for her brother's sake, I can see that. And the story has a sweeter side than if she were doing it just for herself. It makes it more worth while."
It was the first time that York had caught the note of anything outside of self in Jerry's views of life.
He involuntarily pressed his hand against the specially delivered letter he himself had received that afternoon, and his lips were set grimly. The plea of the old woman, and the soul of the young woman, which called loudest now?
"Will this young Ekblad go up to his sweetheart's grave every Sunday, like Mr. Ponk comes here?" Jerry asked, after a pause.
"No, he will probably never go near it," York replied.
"Why not? I thought that was the customary way of doing here," Jerry declared.