She put her little hand on his arm appealingly to win his consent. His eyes rested on it curiously, Then he took it in his big brown one and turned it palm up. Its delicacy and perfect finish moved him, for it seemed to him that in the contrast between the two hands he saw in miniature the difference of sex. His showed strength and competency and the roughness that comes of the struggle of life. But hers was strangely tender and confiding, compact of the qualities that go to make up the strength of the weak. Surely he deserved the worst if he was not good to her, a shield and buckler against the storms that must beat against them in the great adventure they were soon to begin together.
Reverently he raised the little hand and kissed its palm.
“Sure, sweetheart I had forgotten about your mother’s claim. We can wait, I reckon,” he added with a smile. “You must always set me straight when I lose the trail of what’s right, Curly Haid. You are to be a guiding-star to me.”
“And you to me. Oh, Bucky, isn’t it good?”
He kissed her again hurriedly, for the train was jarring to a halt. Before he could answer in words, O’Halloran burst into the coach, at the head of his little company.
“All serene, Bucky. This is the last scene, and the show went without a hitch in the performance anywhere.”
Bucky smiled at Frances as he answered his enthusiastic friend:
“That’s right. Not a hitch anywhere.”
“And say, Bucky, who do you think is in the other coach dressed as one of the guards?”
“Colonel Roosevelt,” the ranger guessed promptly.