Part 42 (1/2)

”And he knew _me_! And he shook hands with me right before all the men--and you ought to seen 'em look! And he's going to teach me how to walk on snowshoes! Oh, ain't you _glad_! 'Cause now you and Bill can----”

”_Charlie!_” The girl's face flamed, and the word seemed wrung from her very heart. The boy paused for a moment in the midst of his breathless harangue and eyed his sister with disgust.

”You know you _do_ love him,” he continued, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng defiantly, ”even if you did have a sc.r.a.p--and he loves you, too! And that dang St. Ledger's just nothing but a--a--a _squirt_--that's what he is--and if I was Bill Carmody I'd punch his head for him if he even _spoke_ to you again--if you was _my_ girl!

”And I'm going to tell him we _know_ he never swiped those bonds, and you stuck up for him when old man Carmody told you he did.”

The last words of the boy's remarks were addressed to an empty chair, for the girl, white and trembling, had fled into the other room and banged the door after her.

Mrs. Appleton, with an unintelligibly muttered excuse, hurriedly followed, leaving her husband gazing from her retreating back to the excited face of the youngster, and muttering: ”Bless my soul! Bless my soul!” between the gulps of his coffee, which for once in his life he swallowed with never a growl at the canned milk. A moment later he abruptly left the table and, motioning the boy to follow, led the way to the office.

A half-hour pa.s.sed, and Charlie left the building under the strictest kind of orders not to mention to Bill Carmody either Ethel or the bonds.

Puzzling his small head over the inexplicable doings of grown-up people, he wandered toward the cook-shack to hunt up Daddy Dunnigan, with whom he had already struck up a great friends.h.i.+p.

”She loves him and he loves her,” he muttered to himself as he scuffed his brand-new moccasins through the soft snow, ”and each one tries to let on they don't. And Uncle Appleton won't let me tell Bill _she_ does so he'd go and tell her _he_ does; and then old man Carmody and his bonds could go to the _devil_!

”You bet, I hope I never get in love and act like a couple of fools.

Now, I bet she'll marry that _sniffit_, and he'll marry Blood River Jack's sister.” The boy paused and glanced speculatively at the falling snow. ”I wonder if he wants to? Anyhow, I can ask him that much.”

Later, in the office, Mrs. Appleton broke in upon her husband's third black cigar. There was no doorway connecting the office with the other two rooms, and the lumberman watched the snowflakes melt on his wife's hair as she seated herself directly in front of him.

”Well, Hubert Appleton, this is a nice mess you have got us into, I must say!”

”_Me!_” grinned the man. ”Why, little girl, this is your party.”

”I wish you would tell me who it was that suggested leaving out young Mr. Holbrooke, and coming here so that Ethel could meet this _man_?”

”She--er--met him--didn't she?”

”You needn't try to be facetious! What are you going to do about it?”

”Who--me? Oh, just stick around and watch the fun.”

”Fun! Fun! Hubert Appleton, aren't you _ashamed_ of yourself? And that poor girl in there crying her eyes out! Fun, indeed--it's _tragedy_!”

”There, there, little woman; don't let's get excited. It's up to us to kind of figure things out a bit; but the young folks themselves will be the real actors.

”Now, just how much--or, how little did she tell you?”

”She told me _everything_. Poor dear, it did her good. She has had n.o.body to tell--n.o.body to cry with her and sympathize with her.”

When his wife concluded, H. D. Appleton had received a very accurate chronicle of the doings of Bill Carmody from the time of his boyhood until chance threw them together in the smoking-compartment of the west-bound sleeper.

The lumberman listened attentively, without interrupting, until his wife finished.

”Does she think Bill took those bonds?” he asked.

”No. She does not. Even with everything else against him, she cannot bring herself to believe that he is a thief.”