“That feller’s shaping well,” he said, his thoughts for the moment evidently upon the practical side of her comfort.
The girl nodded. That look of rapturous joy had left her, and she too became practical.
“I think so—when Mrs. Ransford leaves him alone,” she said, with a little laugh. “She declares it is always necessary to harass a ‘hired’ man from daylight to dark. If I were he I’d get out into the pastures, or hay sloughs, or forest, or somewhere, and stay there till she’d gone to bed. Really, Buck, she’s a terrible woman.”
In the growing weeks of companionship Joan had learned to use this man’s name as familiarly as though she had known him all her life. It would have seemed absurd to call him anything but Buck now. Besides, she liked doing so. The name fitted him. “Buck;” it suggested to her—spirit, independence, courage, everything that was manly; and she had long ago decided that he was all these things—and more.
Buck laughed in his quiet fashion. He rarely laughed loudly. Joan thought it sounded more like a deep-throated gurgle.
“She sure is,” he declared heartily.
“Of course,” Joan smiled. “You have crossed swords with her.”
The man shook his head.
“Not me,” he said. “She did the battlin’. Guess I sat tight. You see, words ain’t as easy to a man, as to—some women.”