"The chances were that you'd fall and be killed. You had no right to take the chance. And Charlie had no right to let you do it."
"Charlie hadn't anything to do with it. He couldn't have helped himself," said Phil defensively.
"Then the rest of them down on the creek should have stopped you. It was the craziest thing I ever saw."
"I suppose it was silly," Phil admitted tamely, "but it's all over now."
It was in her heart to say that nothing greatly mattered, and yet there was a certain comfort in knowing that he cared. His blue eyes told her frankly how much he cared; and she was not unmindful of the wistful smile with which he regarded her.
His glance wandered from her face to the long-stemmed roses on the mantel-shelf behind her. He knew perfectly well where those roses had come from. She saw the resentment in his eyes. The resumption of social relations between her aunts and the Holtons that had brought her in contact with these nephews of Jack Holton struck her in a new light, with Fred there before her, with Charles's roses flaunting themselves unrebuked in her father's house. She had no business to be receiving Fred Holton; Charles's flowers assumed suddenly a dire significance. She meant to be rid of them the moment she could do so without attracting attention. It was on her tongue to say something unkind to Fred; her loyalty to her mother seemed to demand it. And yet neither Fred nor Charles had been in any wise responsible for her mother's tragedy. Fred had risen and stood before the fire with his arms folded. The care he took to make himself presentable, expressed in his carefully brushed clothes; the polish on his rough shoes; his clean-shaven face, touched her now as at other times. She wondered whether, if they had been alone, she would not have confessed her perplexities and asked his counsel. In their talks she had been impressed by his rugged common sense, and her plight was one that demanded the exercise of just that quality. Rose turned the pages of her book. Her father and Nan continued their conference in low tones in the adjoining room.
"You promise—don't you—that you won't ever do foolish things like that any more," and Fred put out his hand half in farewell, half as though the clasp he invited would mean a pledge.
"Please forget it. I'll probably never have another chance. That was the kind of thing you do only once; there wouldn't be any fun in doing it over again."
"Your father has been mighty nice to me: I wanted to tell him I appreciated it. I felt I'd like to say that to him on Christmas—just a kind of sentimental feeling about it. But you please say it for me. He'll understand; I couldn't say it before the others."
She responded passively: there were a good many things that she must say to her father!