"The meadow seems to agree with me," she answered. "Why should my not going with you prevent you from doing your errand at the village?"
Why, indeed? thought Carder, regarding her. She had no money, she was in a part of the world strange to her. If she again strolled forth arrayed in the white costume in which her girlish vanity seemed to revel, how could she do anything unsafe during the short time of his absence, especially with Pete to guard her? The dwarf had had it made perfectly clear to him that his life depended on Geraldine's presence.
However, it was Carder's policy never to take a very small chance of a very big misfortune. 'Safe bind, safe find,' was a favorite saying of his.
"As soon as you feel thoroughly rested, we must take a trip to town," he said, and he advanced a bony, ill-kept hand toward hers as if he would seize it. "I think Ma works too hard," he added diplomatically as Geraldine slid her hand off the table. "We must go and see if we can get the right kind of help. You'll know how to pick it out. Then what do you say to havin' an architect come out and look over the old shack here and see what he thinks he can do with it, regardless of expense?"
Geraldine felt that unnerving nausea again steal around her heart.
"It isn't too late for us to take a little flyer in to-day," he added eagerly, and the suggestion made the meadow and its cows look like a glimpse of paradise. Supposing _he_ should come and she be gone! This was the great third day. "I--really--I"--stammered Geraldine--"I feel a little shaky yet."
"Oh, all right," Rufus laughed leniently. "Be it ever so humble and all that you know. _Home_ for you, eh, Gerrie?"
She longed to rise and strike his ugly smile at the sound of her father's pet name, and she trembled from head to foot. "A trusty," she said to herself commandingly. "A trusty."
She did not hear another word that was said during dinner, and when she was free she flew up to her room and put on the poor little grass-stained dress and the rich crêpe of her mother's heirloom.
"O God, send him!" she prayed, as her fingers worked on the fastenings. "O God, let him come"--then with tardy, desperate recollection, she added--"and O God, save his life!"