"Ah, there's the school, and there's a heap of other things that take
your time." Murray had returned to his desk, and Jessie deliberately
moved to the window. "It's those things made me want to talk to you.
I was wondering how you could fix them so you could hand us a big piece
of time up here."

"You want me to work around the store?"

The girl had turned. Her questioning eyes were regarding him steadily.
There was no unreality about her manner now. Murray's smile would have
been disarming had she not been so used to it.

"Just while I'm--away."

There was the smallest possible twist of wryness to the man's lips as
he admitted to himself the necessity for the final words.

"I see."

The girl's relief was so obvious that, for a moment, the man's gaze
became averted.

Perhaps Jessie was unaware of the manner in which she had revealed her
feelings. Perhaps she knew, and had even calculated it. Much of her
mother's courage was hers.

"You'd better make it plain--what you want. Exactly. If it's in the
interest of things, why, I'll do all I know."

Murray's remarkable eyes were steadily regarding her again. His
mechanical smile had changed its character. It was spontaneous now.
But its spontaneity was without any joy.

"Oh, it's in the interest of--things, or I wouldn't ask it," he said.
"Y'see," he went on, "I got right back home here to get news of things
happening north that want looking into. I've got to pull right away
before summer settles down good, and get back again. That being so it
sets everything on to your mother's shoulders--with Alec away. Your
mother's good grit. We couldn't find her equal anywhere when it comes
to handling this proposition. But she doesn't get younger. And it
kind of seems tough on her." He sighed, and his eyes had sobered to a
look of real trouble. "Y'see, Jessie, she's a great woman. She's a
mother I'd have been proud to call my own. But she's yours, and that's
why I'm asking that you'll weigh in and help her out--the time I'm
away. It's not a lot when you see your mother getting older every day,
is it? 'Specially such a mother. She's too big to ask you herself.
That's her way. It makes me feel bad when I get back to find her doing
and figgering at this desk when she ought to be sitting around at her
ease after all she's done in the past. It's that, or get white help in
from down south. And it don't seem good getting white help in, not
while we can k