“I have half a mind to turn military despot, and arrest you,” said Ruby. “A pair of muffs, even, would be welcome in the winter at Laramie. You have made a wretched bungle of it, Pathie. Why didn’t you mend your man deliberately, a muscle a week, a nerve a month, and so make it a six months’ job?”
“He took the matter out of my hands, and mended himself. There’s cool, patient, determined vitality in him, enough to set up a legion, or father a race. Which is it, Mr. Wade, words to say or duties to do, that has made him condense his being on recovery?”
“Both, I believe. He is mature now, and wants, no doubt, to be at his business of saying and doing.”
“And loving,” said Ruby.
“Ay,” said Pathie. “That has had more to do with it. I hope he will overtake and win, for I love the boy. I keep my oldish heart pretty well locked against strangers; but there is a warm cell in it, and in that cell he has, sleeping and waking, made himself a home.”
“Ah, Doctor,” said Ruby, “you and I, for want of women to love, have to content ourselves with poetic rovers like Brent. He and Biddulph were balls, operas, champagne on tap, new novels, flirtations, and cigars to me last winter.”
We were smoking our pipes on the veranda one warm November day, when this conversation happened.
I had not quite forgotten the Barrownight, as Jake Shamberlain pronounced him, nor quite forgotten, in grave cares, my fancy that his stay in Utah was for Miss Clitheroe’s sake.
I was hardly surprised when, that very evening, a bronzed traveller, face many shades darker than hair and beard, rode up to the post with a Delaware Indian, and was hailed by Ruby as Biddulph.
“We were talking of you not an hour ago,” said Ruby, greeting him. “Wishing you would come to make last winter’s party complete. Brent is here, wounded.”