“Guess you aren’t half as scared as I am,” he blurted out. “I’ve just had the life scared right out of me. It was a pirate hawk. A big one flapped up out of that bush, with a small bird in its claws. I—I was looking for the little feller’s fledglings, and the nest. Sort of birds’ nesting. You see, I guessed they’d need feeding—with their mother gone.”
Helen looked into the eyes of this absurd creature, and—wondered. Was there—was there ever a man quite so simple and—soft hearted? Her eyes became very gentle.
“And did you—find them?” she asked quietly.
Bill shook his head, and looked ruefully down at the paper in his hand.
“Only this,” he said, almost dejectedly.
His air was too much for the girl’s sense of humor. She laughed as she shifted the folded easel, and japanned tin box she was carrying, from one hand to the other.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she cried, stifling her mirth. “And—and I do so hate hawks. They’re such villains, and—and the valley’s full of them. But there, the valley is full of everything bad—isn’t it?”
Bill was smoothing out the paper absent mindedly. Helen’s reference had reminded him of his purpose. Her presence somehow made it difficult.
But Helen went on without apparently noticing his awkwardness.