Jerry's humor was mixed with sarcasm and confusion, both of which troubled the mind of her companion. This girl had so many sides. She was so unused to the Western ways and he was trying to teach her a deeper understanding of human needs, and the human values regardless of geography, when she suddenly revealed a self-possession telling of scraps of her experience in a matter-of-fact way; and yet a confusion for some deeper reason possessed her at certain angles. Why? That mention of Joe Thomson was annoying to York. Why? Jerry's assumed familiarity with such a hermit outcast as the old fisherman was puzzling. Why? York must get back to solid ground at once. This girl was throwing him off his feet. Clearly she was not going to chatter idly of all her experiences. She could know things and not tell them.
"Seriously, Jerry, there are no geographical limits for culture and strength of character. If you stay here long enough you will appreciate that," he began again where he had thrown himself off the trail to avoid a preachment.
"Yes," Jerry agreed, with the same degree of seriousness.
"See, coming yonder." York pointed up the trail to where a much-worn automobile came chuffing down the shaly road toward the ford of Kingussie Creek. "That is Thelma Ekblad and her crippled brother Paul. If you look right you will see the same lines of courage and sweetness in his face that are in my sister's. And yet, although their lives have been cast in widely different planes, their crosses are the same and they have lifted them in the same way."
Jerry hadn't really seen the lines in Laura Macpherson's face, because she had been too full of her own troubles. With York's words she felt a sense of remorse. Finding fault with herself was new to her and it made her very uncomfortable. Also this girl coming, this Thelma Ekblad, was the one whom Mrs. Bahrr had said York had pretended to be interested in once. Jerry had remembered every word of Stellar Bahrr's gossipy tongue, because her mind had been in that high-strung, tense condition last night to receive and hold impressions unconsciously, like a sensitized plate. The thought now made her peculiarly unhappy.
"Joe Thomson's farm is next to hers. Some day I'll tell you her story. It is a story—a real-life drama—and his."
York's words added another degree to Jerry's disturbed mental frame.
"How do you do, Thelma? Hello, Paul! Fine weather for cutting alfalfa. My machines are at it this morning." York greeted the occupants of the car cordially.
"Good morning, York. We are rushing a piece of the mower up to the shop. Had a breakdown an hour ago."
Thelma was tanned brown, but her fair braids gleamed about her uncovered head, and when she smiled a greeting her fine white teeth were worth seeing. Paul Ekblad waved a thin white hand as the car passed the two on horseback, and the delicate lines of his pale, studious face justified York's comparison of it with Laura Macpherson's. Jerry saw her hostess at that moment in a new light. Burdened for the moment as she was under the discomfort of what seemed half-consciously to rebuke the frivolous girl that she dimly knew herself to be, the sudden memory of her resolve declared to Joe Thomson in the shadow-flecked porch the night before came as a balm and a stimulant in one, to give her purpose, self-respect, and peace.