By this time Ashton and Mrs. Blake had gradually come to the same stage of pleasant comradeship. Ashton had started the drive in a sullen mood, his manner half resentful and wholly embarrassed. Of this the lady was tactfully oblivious. Avoiding all allusion to the catastrophe that had befallen him, she told him the latest news of the mutual friends and acquaintances in whom ordinarily he would have been expected to be interested.
She even spoke casually of his father. His face contracted with pain, but he showed no bitterness against 156 the parent who had disowned him. After that her graciousness towards him redoubled. With Isobel for excuse, she gradually shifted the conversation to ranch life and his employment as cowboy. In many subtle ways she conveyed to him her admiration of the manner in which he had turned over a new leaf and was making a clean fresh start in life.
After delicately intimating her feelings, she at once turned to less personal topics. The last traces of his embarrassment and moodiness left him, and he began to talk quite at his ease, though with a certain reserve that she attributed to the vast change in his fortunes. In return for her kindness, he repaid her by showing a real interest in Thomas Herbert Vincent Leslie Blake.
That young man spent his time chuckling and crowing and kicking, until overcome with sleep. Two hours out from Stockchute he awoke and vociferously demanded nourishment. Promptly the party was brought to a halt. They were among the piñons on one of the hillsides. While the baby took his dinner, Isobel laid out the lunch and the men burned incense in the guise of a pair of Havana cigars produced by Blake.
The lunch might have been put up in the kitchen of a first-class metropolitan hotel. The fruit was the most luscious that money could buy; the sandwiches and cake would have tempted a sated epicure; the mineral water had come out of an ice chest so nearly 157 frozen that it was still refreshingly cool. But––what was rather odd for a lunch packed in a private car––it included no wine or whiskey or liqueur. Blake caught Ashton’s glance, and smiled.
“You see I’m still on the waterwagon,” he remarked. “I’ve got a permanent seat. There have been times when it looked as if I might be jolted off, but––”
“But there’s never been the slightest chance of that!” put in his wife. She looked at Isobel, her soft eyes shining with love and pride. “Once he gets a grip on anything, he never lets go.”
“Oh, I can believe that!” exclaimed the girl with an enthusiasm that brought a shadow into the mobile face of Ashton.
“A man can’t help holding on when he has something to hold on for,” said Blake, gazing at his wife and baby.
“That’s true!” agreed Ashton, his eyes on the dimpled face of Isobel.