“Well, she 'a learned the ups and downs by this time. She don't need Addy to help her. I'd have helped a big sight more if I had kep' my distance. It's a thing so con-demned foolish and unnecessary—I can't be reconciled to it noway!”
“You see only one side of it,” said Paul. Unspeakable thoughts had kept pace with his father's words. “Nothing that happens, happens through us—or to us—alone. There was a girl I knew, outside. She was as happy, when I knew her first, as you say my mother used to be. Then she met some one—a man—and the shadow of his life crossed hers. He would have wrapped her up in it and put out her sunshine if he had stayed in the same world. Now she can be herself again, after a while. It cannot take long to forget a person you have known only a little over a year.”
The packer rose on one elbow. He reached across and shook his son.
“Where is that girl? Answer me! Take your face out of your hands!”
“At Bisuka Barracks. She is the commandant's daughter. I came out to marry her.”
“What possessed ye not to tell me?”
“Why should I tell you? We buried the wedding-day months back, in the snow.”
“Boy, boy!” the packer groaned.
“What difference can it make now?”
“All the difference—all the difference there is! I thought you were out here touring it with them fool boys and they were all the chance you had for help outside. You suppose her father is going to see her git left? They'll get in here, if they have to crawl on their bellies or climb through the tree-limbs. They know how! And we've wasted the grub and talked like a couple of women!”