that this
afternoon he would talk of more than trees and rocks and footprints of
the wild things of the forest.

"Your father is gettin' along well," he said at length.

"Yes," she answered. "He has had a good holiday, even with his broken
leg. He is looking ever so much better."

"You will be goin' away before long," he continued.

"Yes," she answered, soberly, and waited.

"Things about here ain't goin' to be the same after you're gone," he
went on. He was avoiding her eyes and industriously throwing bits of
crumbled rock into the canyon. He wore no coat, and the neck of his
shirt was open, for the day was warm. Had he caught her side-long
glances even his slow, self-deprecating mind must have read their
admiration. But he kept his eyes fixed on the green water.

"You see," he said, "before you came it was different. I didn't know
what I was missin', an' so it didn't matter. Not but what I was
dog-sick of it at times, but still I thought I was livin',--thought
this was life, and, of course, now I know it ain't. At least, it won't
be after you're gone."

"That's strange," she said, not in direct answer to his remark, but as
a soliloquy on it as she turned it over in her mind. "This life, now,
seems empty to you. All my old life seems empty to me. This seems to
me the real life, out here in the foothills, with the trees, and the
mountains, and--and our horses, you know."

She might have ended the sentence in a way that would have come much
closer to him, and been much truer, but conventionality had been bred
into her for generations and she did not find it possible yet freely to
speak the truth. Indeed, as she thought of her position here it seemed
to her she had become shamelessly unconventional. She thought of her
mother, careful, correct,--"Always be correct, my dear,"--and wondered
what she would say could she see her only child on these wild,
unchaperoned rides and in these strange confidences where she was a
girl and Dave was a boy and all the artificialities with which society
aims to protect itself had been stripped away. There was a dash of
adventure which added to the relish of the situation.

"It's such a wonderful life," she continued. "One gets so strong and
happy in it."

"You'd soon get sick of it," he said. "We don't see nothin'. We don't
learn nothin'. Reenie, I'm eighteen, an' I bet you could read an'
write better'n me when you was six."

"Did you never go to school?"