"Yes," Vane answered. "It's a long while since I've struck an entertainment of any kind, and that yellow-haired mite's dancing is one of the prettiest things I've seen."
"You've been twice already," Carroll hinted. "The girl with the blue eyes sings her first song rather well."
"I think so," Vane agreed with a significant absence of embarrassment. "In this case a good deal depends on the singing—the interpretation, isn't it? The thing's on the border, and I've struck places where they'd have made it gross; but the girl only brought out the mischief. Strikes me she didn't see there was anything else in it"
"That's curious, considering the crowd she goes about with. Aren't you cultivating a critical faculty?"
Vane disregarded the ironical question.
"She's Irish; that accounts for a good deal."
He paused and looked thoughtful.
"If I knew how to do it, I'd like to give five or ten dollars to the child who dances. It must be a tough life, and her mother—the woman at the piano—looks ill. I wonder whatever brought them to a place like this?"
"Struck a cold streak at Nanaimo, the storekeeper told me. Anyway, since we're to start at sunup, I'm staying here." Then he smiled. "Has it struck you that your attendance in the front seats is liable to misconception?"
Vane rose without answering and dropped into the canoe. Thrusting her off, he drove the light craft toward the wharf with vigorous strokes of the paddle, and Carroll shook his head whimsically as he watched him.
"Anybody except myself would conclude that he's waking up at last," he commented.
A minute or two later Vane swung himself up onto the wharf and strode into the wooden settlement. There were one or two hydraulic mines and a pulp mill in the vicinity, and, though the place was by no means populous, a company of third-rate entertainers had arrived there a few days earlier. On reaching the rude wooden building in which they had given their performance and finding it closed, he accosted a lounger.
"What's become of the show?" he asked.
"Busted. Didn't take the boys' fancy. The crowd went out with the stage this afternoon; though I heard that two of the women stayed behind. Somebody said the hotel-keeper had trouble about his bill."
Vane turned away with a slight sense of compassion. More than once during his first year or two in Canada he had limped footsore and weary into a wooden town where nobody seemed willing to employ him. An experience of the kind was unpleasant to a vigorous man, but he reflected that it must be much more so in the case of a woman, who probably had nothing to fall back upon. However, he dismissed the matter from his mind. Having been kneeling in a cramped position in the canoe most of the day, he decided to stroll along the waterside before going back to the sloop.
Great firs stretched out their somber branches over the smooth shingle, and now that the sun had gone their clean resinous smell was heavy in the dew-cooled air. Here and there brushwood grew among outcropping rock and moss-grown logs lay fallen among the brambles.
Catching sight of what looked like a strip of woven fabric beneath a brake, Vane strode toward it. Then he stopped with a start, for a young girl lay with her face hidden from him, in an attitude of dejected abandonment. He was about to turn away softly, when she started and looked up at him. Her long dark lashes glistened and her eyes were wet, but they were of the deep blue he had described to Carroll, and he stood still.
"You really shouldn't give way like that," he said.
It was all he could think of, but he spoke without obtrusive assurance or pronounced embarrassment; and the girl, shaking out her crumpled skirt over one little foot, with a swift sinuous movement, choked back a sob and favored him with a glance of keen scrutiny as she rose to a sitting posture. She was quick at reading character—the life she led had made that necessary—and his manner and appearance were reassuring. He was on the whole a well-favored man—good-looking seemed the best word for it—though what impressed her most was his expression. It indicated that he regarded her with some pity, not as an attractive young woman, which she knew she was, but merely as a human being. The girl, however, said nothing; and, sitting down on a neighboring boulder, Vane took out his pipe from force of habit.
"Well," he added, in much the same tone he would have used to a distressed child, "what's the trouble?"
She told him, speaking on impulse.
"They've gone off and left me! The takings didn't meet expenses; there was no treasury."
"That's bad," responded Vane gravely. "Do you mean they've left you alone?"
"No; it's worse than that. I suppose I could go—somewhere—but there's
Mrs. Marvin and Elsie."
"The child who dances?"
The girl assented, and Vane looked thoughtful. He had already noticed that Mrs. Marvin, whom he supposed to be the child's mother, was worn and frail, and he did not think there was anything she could turn her hand to in a vigorous mining community. The same applied to his companion, though he was not greatly astonished that she had taken him into her confidence. The reserve that characterizes the insular English is less common in the West, where the stranger is more readily taken on trust.
"The three of you stick together?" he suggested.
"Of course! Mrs. Marvin's the only friend I have."
"Then I suppose you've no idea what to do?"
"No," she confessed, and then explained, not very clearly, that it was the cause of her distress and that they had had bad luck of late. Vane could understand that as he looked at her. Her dress was shabby, and he fancied that she had not been bountifully fed.
"If you stayed here a few days you could go out with the next stage and take the train to Victoria." He paused and continued diffidently: "It could be arranged with the hotel-keeper."
She laughed in a half-hysterical manner, and he remembered what she had said about the treasury, and that fares are high in that country.
"I suppose you have no money," he added with blunt directness. "I want you to tell Mrs. Marvin that I'll lend her enough to take you all to Victoria."
Her face crimsoned. He had not quite expected that, and he suddenly felt embarrassed. It was a relief when she broke the brief silence.
"No," she replied; "I can't do that. For one thing, it would be too late when we got to Victoria, I think we could get an engagement if we reached Vancouver in time to get to Kamloops by—"
Vane knit his brows when he heard the date, and it was a moment or two before he spoke.
"There's only one way you can do it. There's a little steamboat coming down the coast to-night. I had half thought of intercepting her, anyway, and handing the skipper some letters to post in Victoria. He knows me—I'm likely to have dealings with his employers. That's my sloop yonder, and if I put you on board the steamer, you'd reach Vancouver in good time. We should have sailed at sunup, anyhow."
The girl hesitated and turned partly from him. He surmised that she did not know what to make of his offer, though her need was urgent. In the meanwhile he stood up.
"Come along and talk it over with Mrs. Marvin," he urged. "I'd better tell you that I'm Wallace Vane, of the Clermont Mine. Of course, I know your name, from the program."
She rose and they walked back to the hotel. Once more it struck him that the girl was pretty and graceful, though he had already deduced from several things that she had not been regularly trained as a singer nor well educated. On reaching the hotel, he sat down on the veranda while she went in, and a few minutes later Mrs. Marvin came out and looked at him much as the girl had done. He grew hot under her gaze and repeated his offer in the curtest terms.
"If this breeze holds, we'll put you on board the steamer soon after daybreak,"