She hailed Nettie's coming, therefore, as a "demonstration" of her faith, and welcomed the strong, willing, cheerful girl with a grateful heart and open arms.
It was pleasant for a change, to take things easy; to have all the heavier work done by the tall, competent girl, and, better than the relief from the hard labor, was the companionship of another woman in the ranch house. Only a woman who has been isolated long from her own sex can appreciate what it means when another woman comes into her life.
Nettie would place a rocking chair for her mistress on the back veranda, bring the basket of mending, and with her slow, shy smile, say:
"Now, Mrs. Langdon, you fall to on them socks, and leave me to do the work."
This Mrs. Langdon would do, and Nettie would bring her work on to the veranda, the one sewing or crocheting, the other churning and working the butter, kneading the bread or preparing the vegetables for the day. Work thus became a pleasure, and Mrs. Langdon's soft voice chattering of many happy topics made a pleasant accompaniment to their work. If Nettie went indoors to work, Mrs. Langdon soon followed her. She took pride in teaching Nettie her own special recipes, and they would both laugh and exclaim over the mistakes or success of the girl, who was all eagerness to learn. Slowly a feeling warmer than mere friendship drew the two women together.
Although it was against the rules for the Bar Q "hands" to come to the ranch house, save when summoned by the Bull, or on some special errand, Nettie's presence there was widely known and commented upon, and many were the ingenious devices invented by the men to obtain a sight of or a word with the girl. Bull, however, was more than ever on the watch for an infraction of this rule, and more than one employee found himself fired for loitering in the neighborhood of the ranch house or suffered the indignity and pain of a blow from the boss's heavy hand. Harvest time came at last to the prairie, where Bull Langdon had a great grain ranch, and thither the owner of the Bar Q departed to superintend the harvesting operations.
From time immemorial lovers have found a way to meet, and Cyril and Nettie were not long in solving their own problem.
Nettie Would slip from the house after supper, for Mrs. Langdon went early to bed, as farmers do. Between the house and a clump of willows there was a small field, behind it a deep coulee, where the wild raspberries and gooseberries grew in profusion. There, hidden by the thick growth, Nettie would go to pick berries, stopping ever and anon to listen for a sound that only she and Cyril understood, the long-drawn whistle that was like the call of an oriole. At the sound of that musical note, Nettie would stop picking, and, with parted lips, shining eyes and beating heart, she would wait for her lover to come to her in the deep bush.
This was the season when the daylight lingered far into the night; when the soft light of the late sun lay romantically upon the still and sleeping land. Young Cyril and Nettie would sit on a knoll, with the berry bushes all about and above and below them, and with clasped hands, thrilling at each other's nearness, they would murmur their joyful confidences and hopes.
Cyril was what the country folk would have described as "slow" with girls, and Nettie was as innocent as a child. She had never had companions of her own age, not even a girl friend, and Cyril was her first "beau." This simple holding of hands was rapture for these two, an exciting adventure that made them tremble with a vague longing for something more. With the clumsy shyness of the country boy who has known no women, it had taken Cyril two weeks to find courage and power to put his arm awkwardly about the girl's waist. That daring progress, full of joyous excitement, was the prelude to something he had not foreseen. The close pressure of the girl's warm young body against his, the involuntary raising of her face, as it almost touched his own, brought the inevitable consequence. For the first time in either of their lives they kissed. Lost in that single, ever closer embrace, time and place, knowledge of all else on earth, vanished from their minds as, amidst the dense berry bushes, they clung ecstatically together.