She nodded.
“Poor Moira!” he murmured absently.
The thought that he so readily understood touched her; a glint of tears was in her sad eyes. He saw them and placed his arm fraternally around her shoulders. “Tut-tut, Moira! Don't cry,” he soothed her. “I understand perfectly, and of course we'll have to do something about it. You're too fine for this.” With a sweep of his hand he indicated the camp. He had led her to the low stoop in front of the shanty. “Sit down on the steps, Moira, and we'll talk it over. I really called to see your father, but I guess I don't want to see him after all—if he's sick.”
She looked at him bravely. “I didn't know you at first, Mr. Bryce. I fibbed. Father isn't sick. He's drunk.”
“I thought so when I saw the loading-crew taking it easy at the log-landing. I'm terribly sorry.”
“I loathe it—and I cannot leave it,” she burst out vehemently. “I'm chained to my degradation. I dream dreams, and they'll never come true. I—I—oh Mr. Bryce, Mr. Bryce, I'm so unhappy.”
“So am I,” he retorted. “We all get our dose of it, you know, and just at present I'm having an extra helping, it seems. You're cursed with too much imagination, Moira. I'm sorry about your father. He's been with us a long time, and my father has borne a lot from him for old sake's sake; he told me the other night that he has discharged Mac fourteen times during the past ten years, but to date he hasn't been able to make it stick. For all his sixty years, Moira, your confounded parent can still manhandle any man on the pay-roll, and as fast as Dad put in a new woods-boss old Mac drove him off the job. He simply declines to be fired, and Dad's worn out and too tired to bother about his old woods-boss any more. He's been waiting until I should get back.”
“I know,” said Moira wearily. “Nobody wants to be Cardigan's woods-boss and have to fight my father to hold his job. I realize what a nuisance he has become.”
Bryce chuckled. “I asked Father why he didn't stand pat and let Mac work for nothing; having discharged him, my father was under no obligation to give him his salary just because he insisted on being woods-boss. Dad might have starved your father out of these woods, but the trouble was that old Mac would always come and promise reform and end up by borrowing a couple of hundred dollars, and then Dad had to hire him again to get it back! Of course the matter simmers down to this: Dad is so fond of your father that he just hasn't got the moral courage to work him over—and now that job is up to me. Moira, I'm not going to beat about the bush with you. They tell me your father is a hopeless inebriate.”
“I'm afraid he is, Mr. Bryce.”