She was glad now to have the opportunity of remaining with their guest. For, several times during the evening, Howard Brent had seated himself beside her as if he had something of importance on his mind which he wished to confide. And then he had gotten up and gone away without saying it. Peggy did not wish him to make the attempt again. She was not in a mood for confidences and really rejoiced when, at ten o’clock, all of their guests started for home.
CHAPTER IX
An Adventure
“Very well, Vera, if you won’t go with me, I will go alone,” Billy Webster announced. “It is not too far for you to go back by yourself.”
The two of them were riding slowly away from the Sunrise camp on the following day.
Vera looked distressed.
“It isn’t fair of you, Billy, to put me in this position. You know someone ought to be with you. Won’t you let me at least return and tell your mother what we intend doing,” Vera argued. But she continued riding even as she protested. She was just a little behind Billy and he now turned to look at her.
“Come on then, dear. You are not responsible, and whatever happens the blame is mine. But nothing is going to happen or I would not have you with me. So what is the use of worrying mother? What Peggy told me yesterday interests me and I mean to find out more about what those men are planning to do. No one thinks it extraordinary or tries to prevent Dan from going out to hunt any kind of wild beasts he is lucky enough to discover. But, because I happen to be interested in hunting out human beings, my family is always interfering. I haven’t the least intention of hunting them with a gun.”
Billy smiled half seriously and half humorously and then turned his face away.
But Vera Lageloff and the other people who knew him intimately always understood what this expression meant. Billy had made up his mind; and nothing short of physical force would compel him to stop doing what he had determined upon.
Moreover, Vera rarely opposed him. However unformed his purposes and ideals, however he might appear to other people only as an obstinate and ill-balanced boy, he was Vera’s knight. She, at least, believed in him.