“She’s going on well,” she said. Then, with a sigh: “Poor little Molly.”
That expression of pity came near to undoing all Lightning’s carefully calculated pose. A furious desire to blaspheme, and hurl malediction upon the author of the girl’s trouble, drove him hard. Perhaps Blanche read something of that which was passing through his mind, for with the passing of his smiling greeting she went on.
“You know, Lightning,” she said gently, “we mustn’t let ourselves grieve too badly. She’s going to recover, and—and things might have been worse.”
“Worse?”
The old man’s eyes rolled, and his tone was full of scorn.
“Yes. They might have been—much worse,” Blanche went on quickly. “She might have died. She might have—— She’s going to get well. She’ll be her old self again. Time will see to that. And maybe she’ll have forgotten—him. Yes, I think that’s so. She’s a girl of character. And—and I sort of feel she’ll never, never let him come near her ever again.”
“No.”
Lightning’s monosyllable was significant. He glanced down at the bunk-houses. Then his gaze came swiftly back to the woman’s face.
“I was waitin’ around fer you, ma’am,” he said simply. “The Doc said his piece. He said it right here to us all. But it wasn’t the thing I needed. It was your word I was waitin’ on. I had to get it from you that Molly, gal, was goin’ on right. So I jest waited around. Now I guess I’m ready to beat it back to home.”
Lightning’s manner was never so supremely simple, and Blanche was wholly deceived.