It seemed then as if they had said all there was to say, and a pause stretched out silently between them. It was broken by the Scout who had slipped swiftly from the Mabel horse and was kneeling on the ground, his ecstatic arms about the fawn. It was panting and struggling, its dappled sides heaving painfully in the battle for breath, and its big eyes rolled in sick panic.
“Oh, Ranger, can I keep him? Can I keep him and tame him and have him for a pet? Can I?” The boy shrilled into their silence. “Oh, say, can I? I betcher Aunt Lizzie would let me keep a baby deer, maybe! We got a back yard! Can I, Ranger?”
There was rescue and relief in walking over to him, in addressing himself wholly to him, his back toward the girl. “Well, Scout, you could, of course, but I think it would be a pretty mean trick to play on him, don’t you?”
The kindling eagerness in Elmer’s face died hard. “But—if I was awful good to him and fed him—’n’ everything? And no mountain lions would ever chase him in the city! Oh, Ranger, can I?”
Dean Wolcott thought that perhaps the girl would speak—he remembered her hot convictions on the subject of captive wild things—but she did not; perhaps she was likewise thankful for this instant of shelter.
“You can put your rope around his neck and see how he takes it, Scout,” he said. “See if you can get him to drink, first of all. He’s too weak to run away, yet.” Then he turned back to Ginger. “Will you dismount?”
“Thank you, no,” she said.
Even through the mists of amazement he sensed a difference ... what was it? Intonation? Phrasing? It was too tiny a thing to notice, really, but hadn’t she always said—“No, thanks”—with a certain slouchiness of articulation? He could not know that this was one of Mary Wiley’s small, smooth habits of speech.
“Then, may I give you a drink?” He pulled out his folding cup.
“Please! I remember Cold Spring; I’ve been remembering it, thirstily, for the last hour.”