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Page 73
"Oh, _why_ did it have to be?" she demanded again of fate. "It is too
cruel that everything the dear boy wanted most should be denied him."
With her thoughts centred gloomily on his injuries, it seemed almost an
insult for the sun to shine or for any one to be happy, and she was in
no mood to meet any one in a different humour from her own. Added to
her dull misery on Jack's account, was a baffled, disappointed feeling
that she had not been the comfort to him she had hoped to be. True, she
was learning to give him the massage he needed with almost as skilful a
touch as the nurse, but she could not see that she had eased his burden
mentally, in the least, although she had tried faithfully to carry out
the good friar's suggestion. It seemed so hard, when she was ready to
make any sacrifice for him, no matter how great, even to exchanging her
strength for his helplessness, that the means should be denied her.
While she sat there, longing for some great Angel of Opportunity to open
the way for her to help him, a little one was coming in at the back
gate, so disguised that she did not recognize it as such. She was even
impatient at the interruption. Norman, followed by a half grown Mexican
boy trundling a wheel-barrow, came up from the barn, with a whole train
of smaller boys running along-side, to support the chicken coop he was
wheeling. Norman's face shone with importance, and he called excitedly
as he fumbled at the gate latch, "Look, Mary! You can't guess what we've
got in this box! A young wild-cat! L�pe wants to sell him."
"For mercy's sake, Norman Ware," she answered, impatiently, "haven't we
enough trouble now without your bringing home a wild-cat to add to them?
And _now_, of all times!"
The tone carried even more disapproval than her words. It seemed to
insinuate that if he had the proper sympathy for Jack he would not be
thinking of anything else but his affliction. Instantly the bright face
clouded, and in an injured tone he began to explain:
"I thought brother would like to see it, and he could make the trade for
me. He talks Mexican, and I only know a few words, I couldn't make the
boys understand more than that they were to bring it along. I don't see
why Jack's being sick should keep me from having a nice pet like a
wild-cat. He isn't a bit mean, and I haven't had a single thing since
the puppy was poisoned."
The procession had paused, and the piercingly bright eyes of each one of
the little Mexicans seemed also to be asking why. Mary suddenly had to
acknowledge to herself that there wasn't any good reason to prevent.
Because one brother was desperately unhappy was no reason why she should
cloud the enjoyment of the other one by refusing him something on which
he had set his heart.
Norman could not understand the lightning change in her, but he
followed joyfully when she answered with a brief, "Well, come on," and
led the way around to the south door of Jack's room, and called his
attention to the embryo menagerie outside.
To her surprise, for the first time since the surgeons' last visit, Jack
laughed. It was an amusing group, the wild-cat in the chicken-coop with
its body-guard of dirty, grinning little Mexicans, and Norman circling
excitedly around them, explaining that L�pe asked a dollar for it, but
that he could only give fifty cents, and for Jack to make him
understand.
Jack did make him understand, and conducted the trade to Norman's entire
satisfaction. Then recognizing L�pe as one of the boys he had seen
around the office, he began to question him in Mexican about the mines
and the men. Then it developed that L�pe was the son of one of the men
who had been saved by Jack's quick warning, and when the boy repeated
what some of the miners had said about him, Jack grew red and did not
translate it all. The part he did translate was to the effect that the
men wanted him back at the mine. They were having trouble with the "fat
boss," their name for the new manager.
The little transaction and talk with the boys seemed to cheer Jack up so
much that Mary mentally apologized to the wild-cat for her inhospitable
reception, and electrified Norman by an offer to help him build a more
suitable cage for it than the coop in which it was confined. Norman, who
had unbounded faith in Mary's ability as a carpenter, accepted her offer
joyfully. She wasn't like some girls he had known. When she drove a nail
it held things together, and whatever she built would be strong enough
to hold any beast he might choose to put in it.
[ILLUSTRATION "WHEN SHE DROVE A NAIL IT HELD THINGS TOGETHER."]
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