“Oh, yes!––but still–––”
“Oh, you make me tired with your excuses for that coyote;––forget it! But, if your dad was so good to you when you were a kiddie, for the life of me I’m darned if I can understand where his paternal instinct has got to. If I had a laddie,––God save me for indulging in such a fantasy!––but, if I did have, I’d go after him if he were in hell itself. Think o’ it, Phil! Your own flesh and blood, of the woman you have loved well enough to make your wife––the combination transfused––to grow, and develop, and work out to prove before God and his fellow-man the wisdom or folly of the choice the father and mother of him made when they took each other for better or worse.”
“Yes,––when you put it that way, Jim, it makes a man think hard of the tremendous seriousness of the step.”
Jim grinned again.
“You needn’t worry, anyway. If you keep on as you are doing, you’ll win the best and bonniest lassie in this Valley.”
Phil quickly changed the subject, but a tell-tale ruddiness added to the confirmations that Jim had been accumulating along that particular line.
“Talking about my dad, Jim!” reverted Phil, “it is strange the longings I have at times to see him and to patch up the old breach, even if I might never be permitted to see him again after that. But,––oh, well!––what’s the use? I won’t trouble inquiring about him now––it is too late. And I guess he isn’t worrying about me. All the same, I’d give my right hand to see my little sister, Margery. When I ran away, she was a bright, mischievous, fair-haired, little girl, just starting school. She and I were the great chums. She will be growing quite a young lady now.
“I fight the feeling, Jim,––but some day I fear the pulling from her end will be too strong for me and I’ll go back and hunt them up––if only to stand in the shadows and watch her pass.”
Jim looked at his watch and got up to fulfil a business engagement.