"York Macpherson!" his sister fairly gasped. "Coming to call this evening! Will stay with us awhile, of course. All right. I'm willing she should stay with us awhile, but how can she live on a Sage Brush claim? Why doesn't her rich aunt Darby provide for her? What does she look like?"
"I don't know," York drawled, provokingly. Then he added: "Mrs. Darby also writes, saying that she hopes we will look after Jerry while she is here, but that she herself can do nothing for her niece, because a relative of her dear deceased husband, an artist of merit but no means, is dependent on her, and she owes it to her dear deceased's memory to look after this young man. I've a notion that there is something back of both letters, but I haven't had time to read behind the lines yet."
"Turns out her own flesh and blood, a girl, too, to shift for herself, and coddles this man, this artist thing, for her dear deceased's sake. What do you think of that?" Laura burst out.
"I don't think of that," York replied. "Not really knowing any woman but my sister, I can't judge them by the sample. Besides, this 'girl thing' may have elected to come to the Sage Brush herself; that would be like Jim Swaim. Or she may be making a lark of the trip; that's her mother's child. And, anyhow, she has property in her own name, you see."
"Property, bosh! Where is this precious claim that is to sustain this luxuriously reared child?" Laura Macpherson insisted.
"It is an undeveloped claim down the Sage Brush, in a part of the country you haven't seen yet. That is what this child of luxury has come out for to live upon," York said, with a minor chord of anxiety in his voice.
Then a silence fell, for Laura Macpherson felt that something tragical must be bound up in the course of coming events.
It was the poet's hour of "nearly dark." The "high lights" were beginning to gleam from the cupola of the court-house and high-school, and station tower out across the open stretch that lay between it and the town. New Eden was unusually well lighted for its size. York Macpherson had forced that provision into the electric company's franchise. But New-Edenites were still rural in their ways, and never burned up the long summer twilight with bug-alluring street lights. Homes, too, were mostly shadowy places, with the dwellers resting in porch swings or lawn chairs. Moreover, although there was a little leakage somewhere through which things disappeared occasionally, nobody in town except bankers, postmasters, and mortgage companies locked their doors. The jail was usually empty on the Saturday night, and the churches were full on Sunday, as is the normal condition of Middle West towns in a prohibition state.
"The wind is in the east. It will rain to-morrow," York said, after a pause. "I had planned to go to the upper Sage Brush country for a couple of days. I'll wait till after Sunday now."
Laura Macpherson did not know whether the last meant relief or anxiety. York was not readable to-night.