The Ranch Girls and Their Heart's Desire Part 18

Jack laughed. "How exactly like Frieda! It is the things she has that she is grateful for and the mistakes I am not permitted to make because of her excellent advice. But don't worry over me, Jim, at present my greatest desire is to walk up and down the lodge porch with you and see the sky and the prairie beneath the stars and feel the damp sweetness of the wind with the little eddies of snow. What is your heart's desire, Jim Colter?"

"To be always with you, Jack, I suppose," Jim Colter answered as unexpectedly to himself as to the girl beside him. His voice did not hold the light raillery of hers. "Queer ambition, isn't it, for a man old enough to be your father, who has been your father after a poor fas.h.i.+on! I don't know, Jack, I have not meant to tell you this, but I always have told you pretty much everything that was in my mind, and after I say this I want you to forget it. I care for you differently from the old days, Jack. Of course I appreciate the differences between us more than any living human being can appreciate them, the distance from the earth to the stars is small in comparison. And I want you to care for me always, Jack, in the old friendly, daughterly fas.h.i.+on."

"But I don't feel like a daughter to you, Jim, and never have, certainly not as a little girl, so why should I begin now? I simply like you better than any one else in the world except Jimmie, now you have made me think of it, and we understand each other better. I suppose I would have taken this for granted if you had not spoken. What do you suppose we ought to do about it, Jim?"

"Nothing, Jack."

"But suppose I should want to do something? And suppose what I wanted to do should become my heart's desire? Would you withhold it from me, Jim?"

"Yes, if I thought it would do you harm."

"But suppose it would not do me harm, but bring me great happiness, what then?"

Jim Colter made no reply.

Jack smiled.

"Ah, Jim, you never can make me believe that you will refuse to travel with me to the Land of the Heart's Desire, since it is a journey one can rarely take alone."