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"I am so glad that we like the same thing," she continued, hurrying a little; "haven't you noticed? we both like the garden, and we both like Piney. When did you see Piney?" "Piney? Oh, I see Piney often." He rather wished that she had not mentioned Piney. Since he had come to know the tramp-boy better his first ache for him had become sharper and sharper.
He had never mentioned Miss Gossamer to Piney in all their mutual experience, yet the tramp-boy was constantly skirmishing up from afar with a generalisation, like a high-held transparency, that illuminated Miss Gossamer's memory for Bruce.
From the river road below the garden came the sound of the pony's galloping feet and down by the sheen of the river, the tramp-boy was outlined presently, a gallant young figure, full of life and fire. "I'm a-goin' to meet you at the station," he called up to them. "I'm a-sayin' good-bye to Mizzourah! D'you think Italy's a-goin' to beat this, Miss Sally?"
Motionless there, the tremble of his song still on his lips and the gladness of youth and health on his face, the tramp-boy made Steering think of the rosy young shepherd Adonis, he was so glowing, so fine and fresh.
"Best old man in the world," answered Piney, with the soft, sweet shyness, like a girl's, that was always in his voice when he let his affections find expression. Before this Steering had heard, from old Bernique himself, the short story that had connected the affections of the tramp-boy and the wandering prospector. Piney, Old Bernique had said, was the child of a woman whom he had known in St.
"Yes, you oughta saw it," chimed in another. "Cert'n'y was no little-small flame. I could see Sally movin' araoun' in the flare. Had that tramp-boy taggin' abaout with her. I declare, if he di'n' look like a gipsy!" The neighbourly throng was at this moment augmented by the appearance of two ladies who fluttered out on the porch of a rose-trellised cottage, like small, proud pouter pigeons.
From Steering his eyes roamed afar toward the Canaan Tigmores. A little shiver caught him. "The man that was expect'," he mused, "the man that was expect'!" Then he, too, rode away. Where the ridge road dropped down close to the pale river at a dip in the hills, Steering overtook the tramp-boy, hallooed to him, and watched him, as he turned his pony about and sat waitingly.
There was a group already ranged at the door of the engine-room as the people came on. Bruce Steering and his wife, Old Bernique, and the tramp-boy were in the centre of the group. "We are all steamed up!" cried Bruce. "Make ready there, boys! Hurrah for the greatest zinc run in the greatest State in the Union! Now, Piney!"
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