"And what would be the color of her hair?"
"Red, I s'pose, like his; not—not like yours—Split," he added shyly, glancing at the brown fire of the curls that escaped from her hood.
But Irene was no longer listening. She was looking over to the other side of the street, where that shrinking, pitiable old figure in its threadbare neatness trembled; not daring to seek safety across the dangerously smooth street, nor daring to remain exposed here, where it ducked ridiculously every now and then to avoid the whizzing balls that sang about it.
Irene breathed hard. A coward for a father, a scarecrow, a butt for a gang of miners' boys! This, this was her father! Why, even crippled old Jim, the wood-chopper, seen in retrospect and haloed by copper-colored dreams of romantic rehabilitation—even Jim seemed regrettable.
But she did not hesitate, any more than Fedalma did. She, too, knew a daughter's duty—to a hitherto unknown, just-discovered father. A merely ordinary, every-day parent like Francis Madigan was, as a matter of course, the common enemy, and no self-respecting Madigan would waste the poetry of filial feeling upon any one so realistic.
"You wait for me here, Jack," she said, with unhesitating reliance upon his obedience.
"Where're you going? I thought you were in a hurry to get down to the wickiups."
She did not hear him. She had spun off the sled, and with the sure-footed speed of the hill-child she was crossing the street.
Old Trask, his short-sighted eyes blinking beneath his twitching, bushy red eyebrows, looked down as upon a miracle when a red-mittened hand caught his and he heard a confident voice—the clear voice children use to enlighten the stupidity of adults:
"I'll help you across; take my hand."