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Then, borrowing a small tin cup from the cook, he fussed over the stove with some dark, smelly decoction of tobacco-juice and ink. Rosy-Lilly was consumed with curiosity, especially when she saw him apparently digging beads off an Indian tobacco-pouch which he always carried. But she did not go near enough to get enlightened as to his mysterious occupation.
She continued, indeed, to cast at him eyes of pleading reproach, but always from a distance, and such appeals rolled off McWha's crude perception like water off a musk rat's fur. He had nothing "agin her," as he would have put it, if only she would keep out of his way. But Rosy-Lilly, true to her sex, was not vanquished by any means, or even discouraged. She was only biding her time.
Every one was satisfied but Johnson; and he was constrained to seem so. There was an oppressive silence for some seconds. It was broken by the soft treble of Rosy-Lilly, who had been standing before the Boss and gazing up into his face with awed attention throughout the harangue. "What did you say, Dave?" she piped, her hands clasped behind her back.
She had elicited the customary rough demand "Well, Yaller Top, what d'you want?" But this time she held her ground, though with quivering lips. "Yaller Top ain't my name 'tall," she explained with baby politeness. "It's Rosy-Lilly; 'n' I jes' thought you might want me to sit on yer knee a little, teeny minit." Much taken aback, McWha glanced about the room with a loutish grin.
It chanced that the Boss and Johnson together were kept away from camp one night till next morning, laying out a new "landing" over on Fork's Brook. When it came time for Rosy-Lilly to be put to bed, the honour fell, as a matter of course, to Jimmy Brackett.
"Somethin' as shall never tech you, Rosy-Lilly!" declared Johnson, snatching up the child and bearing her off to bed, amid a roar of laughter which saved Dave Logan the embarrassment of a reply. For a time, now, Rosy-Lilly left McWha alone, so markedly that it looked as if Walley Johnson or Jimmy Brackett had admonished her on the subject.
The cabin was warm now, and on tiptoe Johnson and Rosy-Lilly went about their work, setting the table, "bilin' the tea," and frying the bacon. When Red McWha came in from the barn, and stamped the snow from his feet, Rosy-Lilly said "Hush!" laid her finger on her lip, and glanced meaningly at the moveless shape in the bunk.
Then knocking out his pipe, he proceeded to fill the stove for the night, and spread his blanket on the floor beside it. "If ye wants to make the camp a baby-farm," he growled, "don't mind me!" Under the dominion of Rosy-Lilly fell Conroy's camp at sight, capitulating unconditionally to the first appeal of her tearful blue eyes, and little, hurt red mouth.
Then she would come closer, without a word from her usually nimble little tongue, lean against McWha's knee, and look up coaxingly into his face. If McWha chanced to be singing, for he was a "chanter" of some note, he would appear so utterly absorbed that Rosy-Lilly would at last slip away, with a look of hurt surprise in her face, to be comforted by one of her faithful.
Then he flushed angrily, as he felt the demand of the sudden silence. Looking down again, with a scowl, at the expectant little face of Rosy-Lilly, he growled: "Well, not as I knows of!" and rose to his feet, thrusting her brusquely aside. "Ain't he uglier'n hell?" murmured Bird Pigeon to Walley Johnson, spitting indignantly on the stove-leg.
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