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It was the same to camp-packer and rich contractor's daughter. As Ida listened it seemed to stir the primitive impulses of her human nature. She took alarm and stopped her ears to it. "Is it wise to listen?" she asked. "It leads to nothing but restlessness." "It seldom leads to any material benefit," Weston admitted.
He wouldn't see that his mother's ideas were apt to get him into trouble when he tried to apply them." Ida sat silent for a few moments. There was no longer any doubt in her mind that Weston who had turned his back on Scarthwaite was identical with Weston the camp-packer. "Do you remember what they quarreled over?" she asked at length.
Does Miss Weston recall to you anybody we have met?" "No," said Ida, with a somewhat incautious decisiveness. "If you mean our camp-packer, she certainly does not." Arabella understood this to mean that any comparison of the kind suggested would be derogatory to the packer, which was somewhat significant.
His quietness was too obvious, and she felt that it covered a good deal. "One of them wrote you?" she asked. "Yes," admitted Weston, "my father indulged in a few reproaches. He didn't seem to like the notion of my having served as your camp-packer. After that, you were in London?"
After all" and she seemed to have some difficulty in finding the right words "we have never asked you to do anything unreasonable." Weston understood that what she meant was that she, at least, had not treated him as a mere camp-packer, and, as she was quick to notice, the blood crept into his face. Her manner, which was not conciliatory, had, also, an unsteadying effect on him.
As they did so, her eyes grew curiously soft, for when she had last looked upon those snow-barred heights the camp-packer had been at her side. Then she turned with a sudden start and a swift rush of blood to her face as a maid announced, "Mr. Weston."
The question was flung at Kinnaird, but Ida saw that it was a relief to him when she answered it. "My father hired him. He was our camp-packer, the man who set up the tents, made the fires, and poled the canoes," she said. Weston stood up and, looking hard at Kinnaird, straightened himself. His face was an unpleasant red, and there was badly-suppressed anger in his eyes.
That a young woman of extensive possessions should encourage a camp-packer was, from her point of view, unthinkable. For this reason, perhaps, it was not astonishing that there was for some little time a quiet battle between the two. When Ida desired to go fishing, Mrs. Kinnaird suggested something else, or contrived that the packer should be busy.
Weston spread out his hands. "I don't know. Act as somebody's camp-packer. Shovel on the railroads. Work on the ranches." It was very evident to Ida that his quietness was the result of a strenuous effort. The barrier of reticence between them was very frail just then, and she meant to break it down.
"I'm not quite sure her views and yours would coincide," he said. "Anyway, she has been in New York before and in England, for that matter." Mrs. Frisingham adroitly shifted her point of attack, and it almost appeared, though Stirling could not tell how, that she had heard of the camp-packer.
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