Garry plunged through and almost landed upon the frightened boy. He groped for him, picked him up in his arms, and the next minute Roger’s head and shoulders burst through the snow crust and he was tossed by Garry out upon the bank.
“Oh, Garry!” gasped Dorothy, trying to help the man up the bank and out of the snow wreath. “What ever should we have done without you?”
“I don’t see what you’re going to do without me, anyway,” laughed the young man breathlessly, finally recovering his feet.
“Garry!”
She looked at him almost in fear, gazing into his flushed face. She saw that something had happened—something that had changed his attitude toward her; but she could not guess what it was.
The boys were laughing, and Joe was beating the snow off the clothing of his younger brother. They did not notice their elders for the moment.
“How——Why did you come back, Garry?” the girl asked directly.
“I come back to see if you would let such a blundering fellow as I am tell you what is in his heart,” Garry said softly, looking at her with serious gaze.
“Garry! What has happened?” she murmured.
He told her quietly, but with a break in his voice that betrayed the depth of his feeling for his Uncle Terry. “The poor old boy!” he said. “If he had only showed me he loved me so while he lived—and given me a chance to show him.”