"I suppose you mean we all need a track to run on?"
"Why, yes," Dave went on, brightening. "Some of us start out in life with a ready-made track, with 'points' we can jump if we've a notion. Some of us have a track without 'points,' so there's no excuse for getting off it. Some of us have to lay down our own track, and keep right on it, building it as we go. That's the hardest. We're bound to have some falls. You see there's so much ballasting needed, the ground's so mighty bumpy. I seem to know a deal about that sort of track. I've had to build mine, and I've fallen plenty. Sometimes it's been hard picking myself up, and I've been bruised and sore often. Still, I've got up, and I don't seem no worse for falling."
Betty's eyes were smiling softly.
"But you picked yourself up, Dave, didn't you?" she asked gently.
"Well—not always. You see, I've got a mother. She's helped a whole heap. You see, she's mostly all my world, and I used to hate to hurt her by letting her see me down. She kind of thinks I'm the greatest proposition ever, and it tickles my vanity. I want her to go on thinking it, as it keeps me hard at work building that track. And now, through her, I've been building so long that it comes easier, and thinking of her makes me hang on so tight I don't get falling around now. There's other fellows haven't got a mother, or—you see, I've always had her with me. That's where it comes in. Now, if she'd been away from me five years, when I was very young; you see——"
Dave broke off clumsily. He was floundering in rough water. He knew what he wanted to say, but words were not too easy to him.
"Poor Jim!" murmured Betty softly.
Dave's eyes were on her in a moment. Her manner was somehow different from what he had expected. There was sympathy and womanly tenderness in her voice; but he had expected—— Then his thoughts went back to the time when they had spoken of Jim on the bridge. And, without knowing why, his pulses quickened, and a warmth of feeling swept over him.
"Poor Jim!" he said, after a long pause, during which his pulses had steadied and he had become master of his feelings again. "He's fallen a lot, and I'm not sure it's all his fault. He always ran straight when he was here. He was very young to go away to a place like the Yukon. Maybe—maybe you could pick him up; maybe you could hold him to that track, same as mother did for me?"
Betty was close beside him. She had moved out of her stall and was now looking up into his earnest face.