So several hours he spent in her company, in which she was much the same girl as before, natural, unaffected, lighthearted, smiling and laughing, a good fellow, talking horses with unflagging enthusiasm, making friends with the crusty-tempered Wolf, and expressing the desire to ride Bob, whom she declared she was more in love with than ever. At this last Daylight demurred5. Bob was full of dangerous tricks, and he wouldn't trust any one on him except his worst enemy.
"You think, because I'm a girl, that I don't know anything about horses," she flashed back. "But I've been thrown off and bucked6 off enough not to be over-confident. And I'm not a fool. I wouldn't get on a bucking8 horse. I've learned better. And I'm not afraid of any other kind. And you say yourself that Bob doesn't buck7."
"But you've never seen him cutting up didoes," Daylight said.
"But you must remember I've seen a few others, and I've been on several of them myself. I brought Mab here to electric cars, locomotives, and automobiles9. She was a raw range colt when she came to me. Broken to saddle that was all. Besides, I won't hurt your horse."
Against his better judgment10, Daylight gave in, and, on an unfrequented stretch of road, changed saddles and bridles11.
"Remember, he's greased lightning," he warned, as he helped her to mount.
She nodded, while Bob pricked12 up his ears to the knowledge that he had a strange rider on his back. The fun came quickly enough—too quickly for Dede, who found herself against Bob's neck as he pivoted13 around and bolted the other way. Daylight followed on her horse and watched. He saw her check the animal quickly to a standstill, and immediately, with rein14 across neck and a decisive prod15 of the left spur, whirl him back the way he had come and almost as swiftly.
"Get ready to give him the quirt on the nose," Daylight called.
But, too quickly for her, Bob whirled again, though this time, by a severe effort, she saved herself from the undignified position against his neck. His bolt was more determined16, but she pulled him into a prancing17 walk, and turned him roughly back with her spurred heel. There was nothing feminine in the way she handled him; her method was imperative18 and masculine. Had this not been so, Daylight would have expected her to say she had had enough. But that little preliminary exhibition had taught him something of Dede's quality. And if it had not, a glance at her gray eyes, just perceptibly angry with herself, and at her firm-set mouth, would have told him the same thing. Daylight did not suggest anything, while he hung almost gleefully upon her actions in anticipation19 of what the fractious Bob was going to get. And Bob got it, on his next whirl, or attempt, rather, for he was no more than halfway20 around when the quirt met him smack21 on his tender nose. There and then, in his bewilderment, surprise, and pain, his fore4 feet, just skimming above the road, dropped down.
"Great!" Daylight applauded. "A couple more will fix him. He's too smart not to know when he's beaten."
Again Bob tried. But this time he was barely quarter around when the doubled quirt on his nose compelled him to drop his fore feet to the road. Then, with neither rein nor spur, but by the mere22 threat of the quirt, she straightened him out.
Dede looked triumphantly23 at Daylight.
"Let me give him a run?" she asked.
Daylight nodded, and she shot down the road. He watched her out of sight around the bend, and watched till she came into sight returning. She certainly could sit her horse, was his thought, and she was a sure enough hummer. God, she was the wife for a man! Made most of them look pretty slim. And to think of her hammering all week at a typewriter. That was no place for her. She should be a man's wife, taking it easy, with silks and satins and diamonds (his frontier notion of what befitted a wife beloved), and dogs, and horses, and such things—"And we'll see, Mr. Burning Daylight, what you and me can do about it," he murmured to himself! and aloud to her:—
"You'll do, Miss Mason; you'll do. There's nothing too good in horseflesh you don't deserve, a woman who can ride like that. No; stay with him, and we'll jog along to the quarry." He chuckled24. "Say, he actually gave just the least mite25 of a groan26 that last time you fetched him. Did you hear it? And did you see the way he dropped his feet to the road—just like he'd struck a stone wall. And he's got savvee enough to know from now on that that same stone wall will be always there ready for him to lam into."
When he parted from her that afternoon, at the gate of the road that led to Berkeley, he drew off to the edge of the intervening clump27 of trees, where, unobserved, he watched her out of sight. Then, turning to ride back into Oakland, a thought came to him that made him grin ruefully as he muttered: "And now it's up to me to make good and buy that blamed quarry. Nothing less than that can give me an excuse for snooping around these hills."
But the quarry was doomed28 to pass out of his plans for a time, for on the following Sunday he rode alone. No Dede on a chestnut29 sorrel came across the back-road from Berkeley that day, nor the day a week later. Daylight was beside himself with impatience30 and apprehension31, though in the office he contained himself. He noted32 no change in her, and strove to let none show in himself. The same old monotonous33 routine went on, though now it was irritating and maddening. Daylight found a big quarrel on his hands with a world that wouldn't let a man behave toward his stenographer34 after the way of all men and women. What was the good of owning millions anyway? he demanded one day of the desk-calendar, as she passed out after receiving his dictation.
As the third week drew to a close and another desolate35 Sunday confronted him, Daylight resolved to speak, office or no office. And as was his nature, he went simply and directly to the point She had finished her work with him, and was gathering36 her note pad and pencils together to depart, when he said:—
"Oh, one thing more, Miss Mason, and I hope you won't mind my being frank and straight out. You've struck me right along as a sensible-minded girl, and I don't think you'll take offence at what I'm going to say. You know how long you've been in the office—it's years, now, several of them, anyway; and you know I've always been straight and aboveboard with you. I've never what you call—presumed. Because you were in my office I've tried to be more careful than if—if you wasn't in my office—you understand. But just the same, it don't make me any the less human. I'm a lonely sort of a fellow—don't take that as a bid for kindness. What I mean by it is to try and tell you just how much those two rides with you have meant. And now I hope you won't mind my just asking why you haven't been out riding the last two Sundays?"
He came to a stop and waited, feeling very warm and awkward, the perspiration37 starting in tiny beads38 on his forehead. She did not speak immediately, and he stepped across the room and raised the window higher.
"I have been riding," she answered; "in other directions."
"But why...?" He failed somehow to complete the question. "Go ahead and be frank with me," he urged. "Just as frank as I am with you. Why didn't you ride in the Piedmont hills? I hunted for you everywhere.
"And that is just why." She smiled, and looked him straight in the eyes for a moment, then dropped her own. "Surely, you understand, Mr. Harnish."
"I do, and I don't. I ain't used to city ways by a long shot. There's things one mustn't do, which I don't mind as long as I don't want to do them."
"But when you do?" she asked quickly.
"Then I do them." His lips had drawn40 firmly with this affirmation of will, but the next instant he was amending41 the statement "That is, I mostly do. But what gets me is the things you mustn't do when they're not wrong and they won't hurt anybody—this riding, for instance."
She played nervously42 with a pencil for a time, as if debating her reply, while he waited patiently.
"This riding," she began; "it's not what they call the right thing. I leave it to you. You know the world. You are Mr. Harnish, the millionaire—"
"Gambler," he broke in harshly
She nodded acceptance of his term and went on.
"And I'm a stenographer in your office—"
"You're a thousand times better than me—" he attempted to interpolate, but was in turn interrupted.
"It isn't a question of such things. It's a simple and fairly common situation that must be considered. I work for you. And it isn't what you or I might think, but what other persons will think. And you don't need to be told any more about that. You know yourself."
Her cool, matter-of-fact speech belied43 her—or so Daylight thought, looking at her perturbed44 feminineness, at the rounded lines of her figure, the breast that deeply rose and fell, and at the color that was now excited in her cheeks.
"I'm sorry I frightened you out of your favorite stamping ground," he said rather aimlessly.
"You didn't frighten me," she retorted, with a touch of fire. "I'm not a silly seminary girl. I've taken care of myself for a long time now, and I've done it without being frightened. We were together two Sundays, and I'm sure I wasn't frightened of Bob, or you. It isn't that. I have no fears of taking care of myself, but the world insists on taking care of one as well. That's the trouble. It's what the world would have to say about me and my employer meeting regularly and riding in the hills on Sundays. It's funny, but it's so. I could ride with one of the clerks without remark, but with you—no."
"But the world don't know and don't need to know," he cried.
"Which makes it worse, in a way, feeling guilty of nothing and yet sneaking45 around back-roads with all the feeling of doing something wrong. It would be finer and braver for me publicly..."
"To go to lunch with me on a week-day," Daylight said, divining the drift of her uncompleted argument.
She nodded.
"I didn't have that quite in mind, but it will do. I'd prefer doing the brazen46 thing and having everybody know it, to doing the furtive47 thing and being found out. Not that I'm asking to be invited to lunch," she added, with a smile; "but I'm sure you understand my position."
"Then why not ride open and aboveboard with me in the hills?" he urged.
She shook her head with what he imagined was just the faintest hint of regret, and he went suddenly and almost maddeningly hungry for her.
"Look here, Miss Mason, I know you don't like this talking over of things in the office. Neither do I. It's part of the whole thing, I guess; a man ain't supposed to talk anything but business with his stenographer. Will you ride with me next Sunday, and we can talk it over thoroughly48 then and reach some sort of a conclusion. Out in the hills is the place where you can talk something besides business. I guess you've seen enough of me to know I'm pretty square. I—I do honor and respect you, and ... and all that, and I..." He was beginning to flounder, and the hand that rested on the desk blotter was visibly trembling. He strove to pull himself together. "I just want to harder than anything ever in my life before. I—I—I can't explain myself, but I do, that's all. Will you?—Just next Sunday? To-morrow?"
Nor did he dream that her low acquiescence49 was due, as much as anything else, to the beads of sweat on his forehead, his trembling hand, and his all too-evident general distress50.
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1
quarry
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| n.采石场；v.采石；费力地找 | |
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offhand
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| adj.临时，无准备的；随便，马虎的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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fore
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| adv.在前面；adj.先前的；在前部的；n.前部 | |
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demurred
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| v.表示异议，反对( demur的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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6
bucked
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| adj.快v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的过去式和过去分词 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃 | |
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7
buck
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| n.雄鹿，雄兔；v.马离地跳跃 | |
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bucking
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| v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的现在分词 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃 | |
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automobiles
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| n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 ) | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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bridles
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| 约束( bridle的名词复数 )； 限动器； 马笼头； 系带 | |
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12
pricked
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| 刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛 | |
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13
pivoted
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| adj.转动的，回转的，装在枢轴上的v.（似）在枢轴上转动( pivot的过去式和过去分词 )；把…放在枢轴上；以…为核心，围绕（主旨）展开 | |
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14
rein
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| n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治 | |
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prod
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| vt.戳，刺；刺激，激励 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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prancing
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| v.（马）腾跃( prance的现在分词 ) | |
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imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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21
smack
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| vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍 | |
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22
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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24
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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25
mite
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| n.极小的东西；小铜币 | |
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26
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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27
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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28
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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30
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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31
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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32
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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34
stenographer
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| n.速记员 | |
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35
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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36
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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37
perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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38
beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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glumly
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| adv.忧郁地，闷闷不乐地；阴郁地 | |
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40
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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41
amending
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| 改良，修改，修订( amend的现在分词 )； 改良，修改，修订( amend的第三人称单数 )( amends的现在分词 ) | |
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42
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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43
belied
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| v.掩饰( belie的过去式和过去分词 )；证明（或显示）…为虚假；辜负；就…扯谎 | |
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44
perturbed
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| adj.烦燥不安的v.使（某人）烦恼，不安( perturb的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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45
sneaking
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| a.秘密的，不公开的 | |
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46
brazen
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| adj.厚脸皮的，无耻的，坚硬的 | |
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47
furtive
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| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
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48
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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49
acquiescence
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| n.默许；顺从 | |
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50
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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