“I don’t care, he does. And he is different from anybody that ever came to the Cañada del Oro before—for that matter, he is different from anybody that I have ever seen anywhere.”
“Dear me,” murmured Mother Burton, “how interesting! But how is he different, dear?”
The girl answered honestly:
“I can’t exactly tell what it is. For one thing, it is easy to see that he is educated. But of course Jimmy is too, so it can’t be that. I am sure, too, that he has lived in a big city somewhere and has known lots of nice people, but so has Jimmy. I don’t know what it is.”
“I judge he is not, then, one of our typical old prospectors,” said Saint Jimmy.
Again the girl’s joyous, unaffected laughter bubbled forth.
“Old! He is no older than you are; I suspect not quite so old, and he has the nicest eyes, almost as nice as you, Jimmy—only, only different, somehow—nice in another way, I mean. And he knows absolutely nothing about prospecting. He is so green it is funny. But he’s going to live in the old Dalton cabin right next door to us and we’re going to teach him.”
“Fine,” said Saint Jimmy with proper enthusiasm, and managed somehow to hide the queer, sinking pain that made itself felt suddenly down deep inside of him. Saint Jimmy was skilled by long practice in hiding pain.{61}
{61}
“Dear me!” exclaimed Mother Burton. “This is interesting. But I must finish my morning work,” she added, moving toward the kitchen.
“I’ll help,” volunteered Marta quickly, and started after the older woman.
But Mother Burton answered:
“No, no, I was almost finished when you came.” Then catching the girl in her arms impulsively, and looking toward her son whose face was turned again to the far-off horizon, she added in a hurried whisper: “Get him out of doors, dear, he has been sitting like that all this blessed morning—make him go for a walk.”
Marta led her teacher straight to their favorite spot on the mountain side, some distance from the house. Here, in the shade of a gnarled and twisted cedar that for a century or more had looked down upon the varied life that moved through the Cañon of Gold below, they had spent many an hour over the girl’s studies. Against the bole of
Prev.
Back
Top