Ramona sat on the porch in the gathering darkness. She had been reading aloud to her father, but he had fallen asleep beside her in his big armchair. During these convalescent days he usually took a nap after dinner and after supper. He called it forty winks, but to an unprejudiced listener the voice of his slumber sounded like a sawmill in action.
The gate clicked, and a man walked up the path. He did not know that the soft eyes of the girl, sitting in the porch shadows, lit with pleasure at sight of him. Nothing in her voice or in her greeting told him so.
He took off his hat and stood awkwardly with one booted foot on the lowest step.
"I came to see Mr. Wadley," he presently explained, unaccountably short of small talk.
She looked at her father and laughed. The saw was ripping through a series of knots in alternate crescendo and diminuendo. "Shall I wake him? He likes to sleep after eating. I think it does him good."
"Don't you! I'll come some other time."
"Couldn't you wait a little? He doesn't usually sleep long." The girl suggested it hospitably. His embarrassment relieved any she might otherwise have felt.
"I reckon not."
At the end of that simple sentence he stuck, and because of it Jack Roberts blushed. It was absurd. There was no sense in it, he told himself. It never troubled him to meet men. He hadn't felt any shyness when there had been a chance to function in action for her. But now he was all feet and hands before this slip of a girl. Was it because of that day when she had come flying between him and the guns of Dinsmore's lynching-party? He wanted to thank her, to tell her how deeply grateful he had been for the thought that had inspired her impulse. Instead of which he was, he did not forget to remind himself later, as expressive as a bump on a log.
"Have you seen anything of Mr. Ridley?" she asked.
"No, miss. He saved yore father's life from Pete Dinsmore. I reckon you know that."
"Yes. I saw him for a moment. Poor boy! I think he is worrying himself sick. If you meet him will you tell him that everything's all right. Dad would like to see him."
Their voices had dropped a note in order not to waken her father. For the same reason she had come down the steps and was moving with him toward the gate.
If Jack had known how to say good-bye they would probably have parted at the fence, but he was not socially adequate for the business of turning his back gracefully on a young woman and walking away. As he backed from her he blurted out what was in his mind.