"Where's Dora?"
The man's question came without turning from the sunlit view beyond the doorway. A wonderful stretch of undulating wood-clad country lay spread out before him. It was a waste of virgin territory chequered with woodland bluffs, with here and there the rigid Indian teepee poles supporting their rawhide dwellings, peeping out from all sorts of natural shelters.
"Dora? Why, Dora's over with Nita Allenwood. That child spends most of her time there now."
Millie's cheerful, easy manner was perhaps the greatest blessing of Ian Ross's life. Her happy good temper spoke of a perfectly healthy body, and a mind full of a pleasant humour.
Dr. Ross withdrew a timepiece from his pocket.
"Now?" he cried. "Oh, you mean because of Steve's going off on the long trail. Five days isn't it before he goes?" He chuckled in his pleasant, tolerant fashion. "Sort of sympathetic butting in, isn't it? Guess heart and sense never were a good team. I'd say Dora's chock full of heart."
"And it's just as well for someone around this house to have a bunch of heart that can feel for other folks," Millie retorted promptly. "Say, you, Mac, there's two days past since word went round of Steve's going, and you haven't done a thing. Not a thing but continue to make life miserable for those poor neches who can't help themselves, and have to spend their play time in swallowing the dope you can't make filthy enough to please your notions of humanity."
The man laughed up into the smiling, admonishing eyes of the woman who meant so much to him.
"Hell!" he cried. "What would you have me do? Isn't it my job to see those poor devils right? Why, they'd lap up dope till you couldn't tell 'em from a New York drug store. The fouler it tastes the more surely they come back for more. I'd say I've lengthened the sick list of this reserve till you'd think it was a Free Hospital, and there wasn't a healthy neche, squaw, or pappoose north of 60°."
Millie picked up the hat he had flung on the side table and hung it on a peg of the coat rack.