Why did he not come to see her? Yet, even as she asked herself the question, Ruth found an adequate answer. She had very little vanity. Probably she had not interested him. There was no real reason why he should call unless he wanted to do so.
Then one day, unexpectedly, she met him on a hill trail.
“Why haven’t you been to see me?” she asked, with the directness that characterized her at times.
Yet she quaked at her own audacity. He might think even though he would be too courteous to say so, that he did not care to waste the time.
He thought a moment before he committed himself to words. He had wanted to come, but he had passed through an experience which made him very reserved with women. He never called on any, nor did he go to dances or merrymakings.
“I’ve been pretty busy, Miss Trovillion,” he said.
“That’s no excuse. I might have got pneumonia from wet feet or gone into a nervous breakdown from the shock. You’ve got no right to pull a girl out of the river and then ride away and forget she ever existed. It’s not good form. They are not doing it this year.”
He laughed at the jaunty impudence of her tilted chin. Somehow she reminded him of a young, singing meadow-lark experimenting with its wings. He suspected shyness back of her audacity. Yet he was surprised at his own answer when he heard it; at least he was surprised at the impulse which had led him to make it.
“Oh, I haven’t forgotten you. I’ll be glad to come to see you, if I may.”
“When?”