Two days later, Eleanor followed Judge Tiffany to the ranch. A perplexing fruit season brought her fair excuse. The year before, the Japanese, adventurers in minor labors, had begun to flood the Santa Lucia tract. They drove out the Chinese; when that spring brought picking contracts, no Oriental was to be had save a Japanese. In the first rush of that season, the Japanese 283 pickers on the Tiffany ranch, in concert with all the other Japanese of Santa Lucia, had thrown down their baskets, repudiated their agreements, and struck. It needed more than Judge Tiffany’s failing strength, more than Olsen’s methodical plodding, to conquer this situation.
She must be a post now, not a rail, Eleanor told Mrs. Tiffany. And Kate would help until Mr. Chester could be moved. At further acceptance of Kate, Mrs. Tiffany rebelled. Kate had foisted herself on them. Goodness knew, Mrs. Tiffany couldn’t tell why they had ever accepted that situation. It didn’t seem to her even decent.
“You’ll perplex me greatly, dear Aunt Mattie, if you don’t let her remain now!” said Eleanor, looking up from her packing.
This remark, cryptic though it was, came as a fresh shower to Mrs. Tiffany’s curiosity. Never before had Eleanor so nearly committed herself on the subject which lay like lead on her aunt’s responsibilities. It prompted Mrs. Tiffany to try for a wider opening.
“Would you like it, dear, if we brought Mr. Chester down to the ranch to recuperate 284 when he is better? I’m sure Edward wouldn’t object. After all, he’s ready to forgive the Northrup affair.”
Eleanor looked up significantly.
“If you’re consulting my wishes, certainly not!” she said.
The sigh which Mrs. Tiffany drew expressed deep relief. Thereafter, they proceeded straight ahead with the arrangement. Eleanor went on to the ranch. Kate, remaining, made herself so useful in a hundred ways that Mrs. Tiffany’s irritation wore itself away.
The old combination of Eleanor and an attractive though undesirable young man had moved her to a perilous sympathy. Now that it was over, now that she had no more responsibility in the matter, she transferred some of that vivid and friendly interest to the new arrangement. She caught herself resisting a temptation to spy on their conversations; she watched Kate’s face for tell-tale expression whenever Bertram’s name came up in their luncheon-time chats.
Kate usurped all the finer prerogatives of the nurse. Hers it was to arrange the sick-room, to put finishing touches on bed and 285 table, to feed him at his meals. Her tawny hair made sunshine in the chamber, her cool hands, in their ministration, had the caress of breezes. He was getting to be an impatient invalid; he bore the confinement harder than he did the ache of knitting bones. Kate’s part it was to laugh away these irritations, so that she always left him smiling.