“Tell me, Mr. Bryant, what was it brought you out this way, when you ought to be worrying around getting wise to—to the ranching business?” she demanded.
Bill flung back his broad shoulders, and, with the movement, seemed to fling off every care. He laughed cordially.
“Say, you make me laugh,” he cried. “Now if I was to tell you what had brought me this way, you’d sure get mad.” Then he discovered the things she was carrying for the first time. “Say, can’t I carry those things?” he cried, reaching out and possessing himself of them without ceremony. “Why, it’s a paint box, and—and easel,” he cried in awe-struck tones. “I didn’t guess you—painted.”
Helen was frankly delighted with him, but she promptly denied the charge.
“Paint? ‘Daub,’ you mean. Guess Charlie tried to knock painting into my—my thick head. But he had to quit it after I reached the daubing stage. I don’t think he guesses I’ll ever win prizes at it,” she went on, moving up toward the pine. “Still, I might sell some of my daubs among the worst drinking cases in the village.”
But Bill felt the outrage of such possibilities.
“I’ll buy ’em all,” he cried. “Just name your price, I’d—I’d like to collect works of art,” he added enthusiastically.
Helen turned abruptly and glared.
“How dare you laugh at me?” she cried, in mock anger. “I—I might have paid you to take one away, but I just won’t—now. So there. Works of art! How dare you? And what are you hugging that old piece of paper to death for? Give it to me. Perhaps it’s somebody’s love letter. Though folks don’t generally write love letters on blue paper. It suggests something too legal.”
Bill yielded up the paper with a good-natured smile.