"If you would like to see my popper, I can manage it," she said hesitatingly. "He'll do anything for me," she added, with a touch of her old pride.
"Who could blame him?" returned Masterton gravely. "But if he is a free man now, and able to go where he likes, and to see whom he likes, he may not care to give an audience to a mere messenger.""You wait and let me see him first," said the girl quickly. Then, as the sound of sleigh-bells came from the road outside, she added, "Here he is. I'll get your clothes; they are out here drying by the fire in the shed." She disappeared through a back door, and returned presently bearing his dried garments. "Dress yourself while I take popper into the shed," she said quickly, and ran out into the road.
Masterton dressed himself with difficulty. Although circulation was now restored, and he felt a glow through his warmed clothes, he had been sorely bruised and shaken by his fall. He had scarcely finished dressing when Montagu Trixit entered from the shed.
Masterton looked at him with a new interest and a respect he had never felt before. There certainly was little of the daughter in this keen-faced, resolute-lipped man, though his brown eyes, like hers, had the same frank, steadfast audacity. With a business brevity that was hurried but not unkindly, he hoped Masterton had fully recovered.
"Thanks to your daughter, I'm all right now," said Masterton. "Ineed not tell you that I believe I owe my life to her energy and courage, for I think you have experienced what she can do in that way. But YOU have had the advantage of those who have only enjoyed her social acquaintance in knowing all the time what she was capable of," he added significantly.
"She is a good girl," said Trixit briefly, yet with a slight rise in color on his dark, sallow cheek, and a sudden wavering of his steadfast eyes. "She tells me you have a message from your directors. I think I know what it is, but we won't discuss it now.
As I am going directly to Sacramento, I shall not see them, but Iwill give you an answer to take to them when we reach the station.
I am going to give you a lift there when my daughter is ready. And here she is."It was the old Cissy that stepped into the room, dressed as she was when she left her father's house two days before. Oddly enough, he fancied that something of her old conscious manner had returned with her clothes, and as he stepped with her into the back seat of the covered sleigh in waiting, he could not help saying, "I really think I understand you better in your other clothes."A slight blush mounted to Cissy's cheek, but her eyes were still audacious. "All the same, I don't think you'd like to walk down Main Street with me in that rig, although you once thought nothing of taking me over your old mill in your blue blouse and overalls."And having apparently greatly relieved her proud little heart by this enigmatic statement, she grew so chatty and confidential that the young man was satisfied that he had been in love with her from the first!
When they reached the station, Trixit drew him aside. Taking an envelope marked "Private Contracts" from his pocket, he opened it and displayed some papers. "These are the securities. Tell your directors that you have seen them safe in my hands, and that no one else has seen them. Tell them that if they will send me their renewed notes, dated from to-day, to Sacramento within the next three days, I will return the securities. That is my message."The young man bowed. But before the coach started he managed to draw near to Cissy. "You are not returning to Canada City," he said.
The young girl made a gesture of indignation. "No! I am never going there again. I go with my popper to Sacramento.""Then I suppose I must say 'good-by.'"
The girl looked at him in surprise. "Popper says you are coming to Sacramento in three days!""Am I?"
He looked at her fixedly. She returned his glance audaciously, steadfastly.
"You are," she said, in her low but distinct voice.
"I will."
And he did.
