Murray McTavish saw her from the window of his office. He saw her pause for a few moments and gaze out at the distant view. He remembered seeing her stand so once before. He remembered well. He remembered her expressed fears, and all that which had happened subsequently. The smile on his round face was the same smile it had been then. Perhaps it was a smile he could not help.
This time he made no move to join her. He waited. And presently she turned and passed round to the door of the store.
"Mother said you wanted to see me about something. Something you needed to explain—personally. That so?"
Jessie was standing beside the trader's desk. She was looking down squarely into the man's smiling face. There was a curious fearlessness in her regard that was not quite genuine. There was a brusquerie in her manner that would not have been there had there been any one else present.
She removed the oilskin hat, and laid it aside on a chair as she spoke, and the revelation of her beautiful chestnut hair, and its contrast with her gray eyes, quickened the man's pulses. He was thinking of her remarkable beauty even as he spoke.
"Say, it's good of you to come along. You best shed that oilskin."
He rose from his desk to assist. But the girl required none of his help. She slipped out of the garment before he could reach her. He accepted the situation, and drew forward the chair from the desk at which Alec had been wont to work.
"You'll sit," he said, as he placed it for her.
But Murray's consideration and politeness had no appeal for Jessie. She was anxious to be done with the interview.
"That's all right," she said, with a short laugh. "The old hill doesn't tire me any. I got the school in an hour, so, maybe, you'll tell me about things right away."