He seemed to become aware that he’d spoken disconcertingly, smiled and patted her shoulder. Hilda wanted to say that he would be missed—very much—but she had a habit of truth-telling that interfered. She got the lunch for him, ran out to the corral with it, and stood looking rather blankly after the two men as they rode away. The thought that Uncle Hank and Pearse might never like each other at all, might actually quarrel, that the thing which Pearse seemed to hold against the older man might turn out to be something that couldn’t be explained away— Well, only a few hours now. She flew to the kitchen, borrowed broom, cloths, dustpan, from Sam Kee, rolled her sleeves high, tied a towel over her hair, and slipped down to the cyclone cellar to make it beautiful for Pearse’s first view of it. Here—nowhere else—they two alone—he would tell her. She would know at last. Captain Snow had followed down; while she worked he dozed on the foot of the couch where Pearse had slept, on the blanket which he had sent to her as a gift. But her noisy cleaning work annoyed the old cat. He was getting to an age when he disliked excitement. He finally jumped down, ambled gravely across and mewed to be let out, swishing his fluffy tail and pawing delicately at the door edge. Hilda let him go, an unusual frown between her brows. She worked on, periods of absolute rigidity alternating with moments of fiercely energetic action, till Sam Kee’s gong sounded above stairs—and she wasn’t decent for the table, let alone dressed to go over and meet Pearse. Hilda started for the station very soon after lunch. When the buckboard came around, Burch jeered that she’d be fully an hour early for the train. But once she had seen her little retreat all spick and span, the checkerboard she and Pearse had played so many games on laid out, the books they had read together on the shelf, she was too restless to wait longer. At the station the agent came out as she rode up; looked very hard at her and called the time. Indifferently, it flitted through her mind; oh, yes, all those telegrams had come through his hands. Of course, he knew. He understood who this was she was meeting. She tied her ponies to the rack and began walking up and down. She couldn’t be still. She looked at her watch every few minutes, tried to make a game counting her steps. Some men rode up, dismounted, and went into the office; people she’d never seen before. There were a lot of new folks around now. The railroad brought them, maybe. The clicking of the instrument in there, sound of voices; she made her path a little farther away, so that she shouldn’t hear, so that it might not interfere with her thoughts, then, in a panic, was afraid she might be too far off when the train arrived, came back and found a box a little way up the track, where she could sit down and wait.