Elliot did not see Miss O'Neill next morning until she appeared in the dining-room for breakfast. He timed himself to get through so as to join her when she left. They strolled out to the deck together.
"After I fell asleep. It took me a long time. I kept seeing you on the traverse."
He came abruptly to what was on his mind. "I have an apology to make, Miss O'Neill. If I made light of your danger yesterday, it was because I was afraid you might break down. I had to seem unsympathetic rather than risk that."
She smiled forgiveness. "All you said was that I might have sprained my wrist. It was true too. I might have--and I did." Sheba showed a white linen bandage tied tightly around her wrist.
"Not so much now. It throbbed a good deal last night."
"Your whole weight came on it with a wrench. No wonder it hurt."
Sheba noticed that the Hannah was drawing up to a wharf and the passengers were lining up with their belongings. "Is this where we change?"
"Those of us going to Kusiak transfer here. But there's no hurry. We wait at this landing two hours."
Gordon helped Sheba move her baggage to the other boat and joined her on deck. They were both strangers in the land. Their only common acquaintance was Macdonald and he was letting Mrs. Mallory absorb his attention just now. Left to their own resources the two young people naturally drifted together a good deal.
This suited Elliot. He found his companion wholly delightful, not the less because she was so different from the girls he knew at home. She could be frank, and even shyly audacious on occasion, but she held a little note of reserve he felt bound to respect. Her experience of the world had clearly been limited. She was not at all sure of herself, of the proper degree of intimacy to permit herself with a strange and likable young man who had done her so signal a service.
Macdonald left the boat twenty miles below Kusiak with Mrs. Mallory and the Selfridges. A chauffeur with a motor-car was waiting on the wharf to run them to town, but he gave the wheel to Macdonald and took the seat beside the driver.
The little miner Strong grinned across to Elliot, who was standing beside Miss O'Neill at the boat rail.
"That's Mac all over. He hires a fellow to run his car--brings him up here from Seattle--and then takes the wheel himself every time he rides. I don't somehow see Mac sitting back and letting another man run the machine."