“I’ll be so glad to have your help, for we will see things alike, not as the older people see for us. It is only at our age that we dare take risks. Your father and Uncle Jim wouldn’t come to Kansas now if it were now like it was when they were twenty-one.”
Thaine did not release her hand.
“I’m glad there is only one Leigh,” he said softly.
The light of his eyes and the sympathetic tone seemed all unlike the heir of the Sunflower Ranch, yet very much like the spirit of the father who had wrested it from the wilderness, and the mother who had courageously shared his every need. 262
“I don’t know tonight where my wilderness lies. But I hope, little girl, I hope I’ll fight as good a battle on my frontier as my father has done—as you are doing. Good-night.”
He hurried away and, falling into the gay company at Bennington’s, was welcomed by Jo as a penitent, and abundantly forgiven.
While down at Cloverdale, Leigh Shirley sat long alone, looking with unseeing eyes at the twilight into which he had vanished.