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Page 70
"Ah," said the doctor, in a tone of frank relief. "Here you are!
I was getting worried about you. Waya said you had been gone since
morning!" He stopped and looked at her attentively. "Is anything
the matter?"
His evident concern sent a warm glow over her chilly frame, and yet
the strange sensation remained. "No--no!" she stammered.
Doctor Ruysdael turned to Hoskins. "Go back and tell Waya I've
found her."
Libby felt that the doctor only wanted to get rid of his companion,
and became awed again.
"Has anybody been bothering you?"
"No."
"Have the diggers frightened you?"
"No"--with a gesture of contempt.
"Have you and Waya quarreled?"
"Nary"--with a faint, tremulous smile.
He still stared at her, and then dropped his blue eyes musingly.
"Are you lonely here? Would you rather go to San Jose?"
Like a flash the figures of the two smartly dressed women started
up before her again, with every detail of their fresh and wholesome
finery as cruelly distinct as had been her own shapeless ugliness
in the mirror of the spring. "No! NO!" she broke out vehemently
and passionately. "Never!"
He smiled gently. "Look here! I'll send you up some books. You
read--don't you?" She nodded quickly. "Some magazines and papers.
Odd I never thought of it before," he added half musingly. "Come
along to the cabin. And," he stopped again and said decisively,
"the next time you want anything, don't wait for me to come, but
write."
A few days after he left she received a package of books,--an odd
collection of novels, magazines, and illustrated journals of the
period. She received them eagerly as an evidence of his concern
for her, but it is to be feared that her youthful nature found
little satisfaction in the gratification of fancy. Many of the
people she read of were strange to her; many of the incidents
related seemed to her mere lies; some tales which treated of people
in her own sphere she found profoundly uninteresting. In one of
the cheaper magazines she chanced upon a fashion plate; she glanced
eagerly through all the others for a like revelation until she got
a dozen together, when she promptly relegated the remaining
literature to a corner and oblivion. The text accompanying the
plates was in a jargon not always clear, but her instinct supplied
the rest. She dispatched by Hoskins a note to Doctor Ruysdael:
"Please send me some brite kalikers and things for sewing. You
told me to ask." A few days later brought the response in a good-
sized parcel.
Yet this did not keep her from her care of the stock nor her
rambles in the forest; she was quick to utilize her rediscovery of
the spring for watering the cattle; it was not so far afield as the
half-dried creek in the canyon, and was a quiet sylvan spot. She
ate her frugal midday meal there and drank of its waters, and,
secure in her seclusion, bathed there and made her rude toilet when
the cows were driven home. But she did not again look into its
mirrored surface when it was tranquil!
And so a month passed. But when Doctor Ruysdael was again due at
the cabin, a letter was brought by Hoskins, with the news that he
was called away on professional business down the coast, and could
not come until two weeks later. In the disappointment that
overcame her, she did not at first notice that Hoskins was gazing
at her with a singular expression, which was really one of
undisguised admiration. Never having seen this before in the eyes
of any man who looked at her, she referred it to some vague
"larking" or jocularity, for which she was in no mood.
"Say, Libby! you're gettin' to be a right smart-lookin' gal. Seems
to agree with ye up here," said Hoskins with an awkward laugh.
"Darned ef ye ain't lookin' awful purty!"
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