"Rather not!" Dick said, relieved. "You're jolly good to me, you know, old Legs! Only I thought you were a bit down in the mouth at leaving your father. Sure you're not?"
She shook her head emphatically.
"No. He wants me to go with you. You can send me back any time, you know, to Grannie. But even if you send me back at once, I want to go on the Occident."
Dick, being a gentleman, was indignant.
"You make me feel like a perfect beast!" he said warmly. "I don't want to send you back at all—and I wish you wouldn't talk as if you were a beastly parcel! You're coming up to Kurrajong with us, and you'll have to ride Tinker for me until I can ride him myself."
Until he could ride himself! The words were in her ears as she climbed the gangway, up which two sailors had carried Dick's stretcher carefully a moment before. She went to the side of the ship, scanning the faces of the passengers as they came along the pier, wondering which could be "Neil Fraser," and hoping that any man with a specially kind face would be he. The time passed, and the cry of "Visitors ashore!" startled her. Then she heard her father's voice behind her.
"That you, Merle? I'm going." His big face was sadder than she had ever seen it, and he kissed her gently. She flushed; he had not often kissed her since Dick's accident. "Be a good girl, and do all you possibly can for that poor boy. Remember, none of us can ever make up what we have cost him. If—if you see anything he would like, buy it for him—you can have all the money you want." He half turned, and she heard him say miserably under his breath, "If one were not so helpless!" Then he put his hand on her shoulder. "It's something—just a little—if you can be legs for him. Don't spare yourself."
"I won't," she said. "Oh, I won't, daddy!"
He kissed her again, and went down the gangway. She watched his huge form threading its way along the pier. His head was bent down, and he did not look back again.
Dick did not leave his cabin that evening. He was tired with the excitement of starting, and was, moreover, developing an invalid's dread of being stared at. The nurses kept him very quiet; even Merle was not allowed inside the cabin, and she wandered about miserably, handicapped by her shyness, and wondering how, in the crowded mail steamer, she was ever going to find a man she did not know. She went to bed with the problem still unsolved, slept badly, and got up early in the morning, dressing as noiselessly as possible in order not to disturb the nurse whose cabin she shared. In the alleyway she met a steward, and a sudden thought came to her.