She was an angel while he was too sick to leave his room, sitting by him for hours, reading to him in her soft child's voice, and speaking to him so gently and tenderly that he felt a better, and oh! so much happier a man when he first walked out beside her again.
Then there came a day when Ben Brodie stopped at the cottage of his kind nurse, and with the air of a culprit asked Jenny to come with him, "away up into the mountains." The light that flashed in her eyes a moment was quenched by something that looked strangely like a tear, as she turned to reach for her hat. It was early afternoon, and most people were still in their cottages, with blinds, and perhaps eyes too, closed. The two walked slowly, or climbed rather, resting often and looking back to where they could see the white cottages blinking through the trees. The wind blew only enough to rustle the pine branches, without stirring the sobs and wails that lay dormant in those trees. Jays and woodpeckers went with them, and many a shining flower was broken by the way. At last Jenny stopped and looked around.
"Don't let us go farther--who knows but what we may encounter another bear?" she said roguishly; and he prepared a soft seat for her under the pines, by pulling handfuls of grass and heaping it up in one place.
She smiled to herself as she watched him; his awkwardness had left him, and for the comfort of one whom he only "liked pretty well," he was taking a great deal of pains, she thought. When she was seated, and had made him share the grass seat, the restraint suddenly returned, and he fell to stroking her hand again, and stammered something about her wrist being better.
"Yes," she affirmed, "and I mean to return to the city in a day or two."
He blushed like a girl. "May I go with you?" he asked; and then jumped at once into the midst of a "declaration"--which had evidently been gotten by heart--winding up by asking again, "and now may I go with you to San Francisco, Jenny? and will you marry me?"
Her eyes had been fixed on the lone bare crag away off across the valley; and the color in them had changed from light gray to deep black, and had faded again to a dull heavy gray.
"You may go to San Francisco, of course, though I shall not see you there. And 'I like you pretty well,' too; but you must not dare to dream that I could ever marry you."