Ward was lying quiet when she went in, except that he was waving her handkerchief to and fro by the corners to cool it. Billy Louise took it from him, wet it again with cold water, and scolded him for getting his arms from under the covers. That, she said, was no nice way for a hookin'-cough man to do.
Ward meekly submitted to being covered to his eyes. Then he wriggled his chin free and demanded that she kiss him. Ward was fairly drunk with happiness because she was there, in the cabin. The dreary weeks behind him were a nightmare to be forgotten. His Wilhemina-mine was there, and she liked him to pieces. Though she had not affirmed it with words, her eyes when she looked at him told him so; and she had kissed him when he asked her to. He wanted her to repeat the ecstasy.
"Ward Warren, you're a perfectly awful hookin'-cough man! There. Now that's going to be the very last one-- Oh, Ward, it isn't!" She knelt and curved an arm around his face and kissed him again and yet again. "I do love you, Ward. I've been a weak-kneed, horrid thing, and I'm ashamed to the middle of my bones. You're my own brave buckaroo always--always! You've done what no other man would do, and you don't whine about it; and I've been weak and--horrid; and I'll have to love you about a million years before I can quit feeling ashamed." She kissed him again with a passion of remorse for her doubts of him.
"Are you through being pals, Wilhemina?" Ward broke rules and freed an arm, so that he could hold her closer.
"No, I'm just beginning. Just beginning right. I'm your pal for keeps. But--"
"I love you for keeps, lady mine." Ward stifled another cough. "When are you going to--marry me?"
"Oh, when you get over the hookin'-cough, I s'pose." Once more Billy Louise, for the good of her patient, forced herself into safe flippancy--that was not flippant at all, but merely a tender pretense.
"Now it's up to you to show me whether you are in any hurry at all to get well," she said. "Keep your hands under the covers while I make some tea. That fever of yours has got to be stopped immediately--to once."
She went over and busied herself about the stove, never once looking toward the bed, though she must have felt Ward's eyes worshiping her. She was terribly worried about Ward; so worried that she put everything else into the background of her mind and set herself sternly to the need of breaking the fever and lessening the evident congestion in his lungs.