Her father gathered her in his lap for the last few minutes before the fire.
“Virginia,” he said, “I learned long ago that we often help others most by just being ourselves. When you grow older, perhaps you’ll understand what the men mean.” They sat silently for a while, neither wanting to leave the fire and each other. From the bunk-house came the sound of voices singing some lusty song of the range. The boys apparently were happy, too. “And now, little girl, it’s a long drive to-morrow, and we must be off early. Kiss your father, and run to bed.”
Closely she clung to him, and kissed him again and again; but when the lump in her throat threatened to burst with bigness, she ran to her own room, leaving her father to watch the fire die away and to think of many things. Pinned to her pillow, she found a brown paper parcel, with “From Hannah” written in ungainly characters upon it. Inside were red mittens, knitted by the same rough fingers that had penned the words. The lump in Virginia’s throat swelled bigger. She ran across the hall to the little room where Hannah, muffled in flannel gown and night-cap, lay in bed, and kissed her gratefully.
“Run to bed, dearie,” muttered the old servant. “It’s cold these nights in the mountains.”
But Virginia’s mind was too full of thoughts for sleep. She reviewed her ride with Donald, her talk with her father, all the dear events of the evening with its crowning joy. It seemed hours when she heard her father go to his room, and yet she could not sleep. At last she sat up in bed, bundling the covers about her, for the air was cold, and looked out of her window. At night the mountains seemed nearer still, and more friendly—more protecting, less strange and secretive. She looked at them wondering. Did they really know all things? Were they millions of years old, as she had read? Did they care at all for people who looked at them, and wondered, and wanted to be like them?
“To-night I half believe you do care,” she whispered. “Anyway, I’m not frightened of you at all. And oh, do take care of those I love till I come back again!”
Then she lay down again, and soon was fast asleep.
CHAPTER III—THE JOURNEY EAST
As the great Puget Sound Limited was about to pull out of the little Wyoming way-station to which Virginia and her father had driven in the early morning, a white-haired, soldierly looking gentleman in gray overcoat and traveling cap watched with amused interest a gray-eyed girl in a blue suit, who, leaning over the railing of the observation car, gave hurried and excited requests to her father who stood alone on the station platform.
“Father, dear,” she begged, “don’t work too hard or read too late at night; and don’t forget to take the indigestion tablets. And, father, I think it would be fine if Jim could have my room when it gets cold. The bunk-house is bad for his rheumatism. And I do hope you can keep William away from town. You’ll try hard, won’t you?” The train slowly began to move, but she must say one thing more. “Daddy,” she called, beckoning him nearer, and making a trumpet of her hands; “daddy, you trust me, don’t you, to use my judgment about talking on the journey?”