"Very well, Fanny," I answered. "Thanks for your inquiry."
"Does the climate suit you, then? Or is it the surroundings?"
"Both, my dear girl, as long as the sun shines on us!" I replied, laughing, while Elsie turned away with a smile.
Fanny almost winked at me, and then looked up the road toward Thomson Forks, which ran close by the ranch and led toward an Indian settlement on the Lake about ten miles away.
"There's someone coming," she said, "and he's in a hurry. Isn't he galloping, Mr. Ticehurst?"
I looked up the road and saw somebody who certainly was coming down the long slope from the crest of the hill with more than reasonable rapidity. I looked, and then turned away carelessly. What was the horseman to me? I leant against the post of the veranda, which some former occupant of the house had ornamented by whittling with his knife, until it was almost too thin to do its duty, and began to speak to Fanny again, when I saw her blush and start.
"Why, Mr. Ticehurst," she said, "it's Mr. Harmer!"
Then the horseman was something to me, after all. For what but some urgent need would bring Jack, who was entirely ignorant of horses and riding, at that breakneck gallop over the mountain road? My carelessness went suddenly, and I felt my heart begin to beat with unaccustomed violence. I turned pale, I know, as I watched him coming nearer. I was quite unconscious that Elsie had rejoined her sister, and stood behind me.
Harmer came closer and closer, and when he saw us waved his hat. In a moment he was at the gate, while I stood still at the house, and did not move to go toward him. He alighted, opened the gate, and, with his bridle over his aim, came up to us. He said good-morning to the girls hurriedly, and turned to me.
"You must come to Thomson Forks directly, Mr. Ticehurst!" he said, gasping, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. "Something's happened, I don't know what, and I can't tell; but she wants to see you at once, and sent me off to fetch you—and so I came, and, oh! how sore I am," and he wriggled suggestively, and in a way that would have been comic under other circumstances.