John Cardigan sighed. Such daring financial acrobatics were not usual with him, but as Bryce had remarked there was no reason why, in their present predicament, they should not gamble. Hence he entered no further objection, and the following day the agreement was entered into with the bank. Bryce closed by wire for the extra logging-equipment and immediately set about rounding up a crew for the woods and for the night-shift in the mill.
For a month Bryce was as busy as the proverbial one-armed paper-hanger with the itch, and during all that time he did not see Shirley Sumner or hear of her, directly or indirectly. Only at infrequent intervals did he permit himself to think of her, for he was striving to forget, and the memory of his brief glimpse of paradise was always provocative of pain.
Moira McTavish, in the meantime, had come down from the woods and entered upon her duties in the mill office. The change from her dull, drab life, giving her, as it did, an opportunity for companionship with people of greater mentality and refinement than she had been used to, quickly brought about a swift transition in the girl's nature. With the passing of the coarse shoes and calico dresses and the substitution of the kind of clothing all women of Moira's instinctive refinement and natural beauty long for, the girl became cheerful, animated, and imbued with the optimism of her years. At first old Sinclair resented the advent of a woman in the office; then he discovered that Moira's efforts lightened his own labours in exact proportion to the knowledge of the business which she assimilated from day to day.
Moira worked in the general office, and except upon occasions when Bryce desired to look at the books or Moira brought some document into the private office for his perusal, there were days during which his pleasant “Good morning, Moira,” constituted the extent of their conversation. To John Cardigan, however, Moira was a ministering angel. Gradually she relieved Bryce of the care of the old man. She made a cushion for his easy-chair in the office; she read the papers to him, and the correspondence, and discussed with him the receipt and delivery of orders, the movements of the lumber-fleet, the comedies and tragedies of his people, which had become to him matters of the utmost importance. She brushed his hair, dusted his hat, and crowned him with it when he left the office at nightfall, and whenever Bryce was absent in the woods or in San Francisco, it fell to her lot to lead the old man to and from the house on the hill. To his starved heart her sweet womanly attentions were tremendously welcome, and gradually he formed the habit of speaking of her, half tenderly, half jokingly, as “my girl.”
Bryce had been absent in San Francisco for ten days. He had planned to stay three weeks, but finding his business consummated in less time, he returned to Sequoia unexpectedly. Moira was standing at the tall bookkeeping desk, her beautiful dark head bent over the ledger, when he entered the office and set his suitcase in the corner.
“Is that you, Mr. Bryce?” she queried.
“The identical individual, Moira. How did you guess it was I?”
She looked up at him then, and her wonderful dark eyes lighted with a flame Bryce had not seen in them heretofore. “I knew you were coming,” she replied simply.
“But how could you know? I didn't telegraph because I wanted to surprise my father, and the instant the boat touched the dock, I went overside and came directly here. I didn't even wait for the crew to run out the gangplank—so I know nobody could have told you I was due.”
“That is quite right, Mr. Bryce. Nobody told me you were coming, but I just knew, when I heard the Noyo whistling as she made the dock, that you were aboard, and I didn't look up when you entered the office because I wanted to verify my—my suspicion.”