Nor could she forget it when he called that evening at her boarding house, ostensibly to tell her that the doctor had set Johnny’s broken leg and found no other injury from the accident.
“It’s going to be hard on his mother. You know she’s a widow and takes in washing,” Vicky said. “I wonder if we couldn’t give a school entertainment for her benefit.”
“It won’t be necessary,” he said promptly. “It’s partly my fault the accident happened. As school clerk I should have had the mouth of the tunnel boarded up. I’m going to pay all the bills and see that Mrs. Haxtun doesn’t lose anything by it.”
Victoria felt a glow at her heart. It always did her good to find out that people were kinder and more generous than she had supposed. Her judgment of Ralph Dodson had been that he was hard and selfish. Now she was ashamed of herself for thinking so. She thought of the “Greater love than this” verse, and in her soul she humbled herself before him. What a little prig she had been to set herself up as arbiter of right and wrong.
Dodson made the most of the opportunity chance had given him. He used it as a wedge to open up a friendship with the girl. She was still reluctant, but this was based on some subconscious impulse. All the fine generosity in her was in arms to be fair to him regardless of his brother.
As soon as he learned that she had a claim on Bald Knob that she wanted to develop Dodson put his experience at her service. He helped her arrange with a man to do the actual assessment work and he went over the ground with her to choose the spot for the shaft. Afterwards he kept an eye on Oscar Sorenson to see that he did a fair day’s work for the pay he received.
On holidays Vicky usually walked or rode out to her claim to see how Sorenson was getting along. She was pretty apt to meet Dodson on the way to Bald Knob or else superintending operations there. Two or three times he came down to her prospect at noon and they strolled up a little gulch to pick wild flowers and eat their lunch together.
He knew so much more about the world than she did that she found his talk interesting. The glimpse she had had of San Francisco had whetted her appetite. Were other cities like the one by the Golden Gate, gay and full of life and fashion which young girls at a finishing school were not permitted to see? He told her of London and Paris and Vienna, and her innocent credulity accepted what he said at face value. He had the gift of talk, the manner of a man of the world. From the confident ease of his descriptions she could not guess that he had never been in Paris or Vienna and only once in London for a flying visit to float a mining scheme.
“You’ll not be going to the mine to-day, dearie,” Mrs. Budd said to Vicky one Saturday morning when the hills were white with a blanket of snow.
“Yes. I promised Oscar to bring his mail and some tobacco. Besides, I want to see how he’s been getting along.”