“Why, I called her Nurse.” answered the
fat lover. “We all called her that, and
it sounded comfortable and homelike and good for every
day. It had a sort of York-shilling confidence,
and your life was in her hands —a first-class
you-and-me kind of feeling.”
“Why don’t you stick to it, then?”
“She doesn’t want it. She says it
sounds so old, and that I’d be calling her ‘mother’
next.”
“And won’t you?” asked Crozier slyly.
“Everything in season,” beamed Jesse,
and he shone, and was at once happy and composed.
Crozier relapsed into silence, for he was thinking
that the lost years had been barren of children.
He turned to look at the home they had left.
It was some distance away now, but he could see Kitty
still at the corner of the house with a small harvest
of laundered linen in her hand.
“She made that fresh bed of boughs for me—ah,
but I had a good sleep last night!” he added
aloud. “I feel fit for the fight before
me.” He drew himself up and began to nod
here and there to people who greeted him.
In the house behind them at that moment Kitty was
saying to her mother, “Where is he going, mother?”
“To Aspen Vale,” was the reply.
“If you’d been at breakfast you’d
have heard. He’ll be gone two days, perhaps
three.”
Three days! She regretted now that she had not
said to herself, “Courage, soldier,” and
gone to say good-bye to him when he called to her.
Perhaps she would not see him again till after the
other woman— till after the wife-came.
Then—then the house would be empty; then
the house would be so still. And then John Sibley
would come and—
IN THE CAMP OF THE DESERTER
Three days passed, but before they ended there came
another telegram from Mrs. Crozier stating the time
of her expected arrival at Askatoon. It was
addressed to Kitty, and Kitty almost savagely tore
it up into little pieces and scattered it to the winds.
She did not even wait to show it to the Young Doctor;
but he had a subtle instinct as to why she did not;
and he was rather more puzzled than usual at what was
passing before his eyes. In any case, the coming
of the wife must alter all the relations existing
in the household of the widow Tynan. The old,
unrestrained, careless friendship could not continue.
The newcomer would import an element of caste and
class which would freeze mother and daughter to the
bones. Crozier was the essence of democracy,
which in its purest form is akin to the most aristocratic
element and is easily affiliated with it. He
had no fear of Crozier. Crozier would remain
exactly the same; but would not Crozier be whisked
away out of Askatoon to a new fate, reconciled to
being a receiver of his wife’s bounty.
“If his wife gets her arms round his neck, and
if she wants to get them there, she will, and once
there he’ll go with her like a gentleman,”
said the Young Doctor sarcastically. Admiring
Crozier as he did, he also had underneath all his
knowledge of life an unreasonable apprehension of
man’s weakness where a woman was concerned.
The man who would face a cannon’s mouth would
falter before the face of a woman whom he could crumple
with one hand.
