“I have,” she said. “We’re taking a great deal more care of Bill than in the old days. I hate to think of the way I used to let him run around wild then. He might have died.”
“What nonsense! He was simply bursting with health all the time.”
“I had a horrible shock after you left,” Ruth went on. “The poor little fellow was awfully ill with some kind of a fever. The doctor almost gave him up.”
“Good heavens!”
“Aunt Lora helped me to nurse him, and she made me see how I had been exposing him to all sorts of risks, and—well, now we guard against them.”
There was a silence.
“I grew to rely on her a great deal, Kirk, when you were away. You know I always used to before we were married. She’s so wonderfully strong. And then when your letters stopped coming——”
“There aren’t any postal arrangements out there in the interior. It was the worst part of it—not being able to write to you or hear from you. Heavens, what an exile I’ve been this last year! Anything may have happened!”
“Perhaps something has,” said Ruth mysteriously.
“What do you mean?”