Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas sat over their cards, while Hughie played
upon the piano and Harry Seagreave listened, with his eyes closed, to
the music. He sometimes brought Pearl a cluster of the exquisite wild
flowers which now covered the mountains, but he rarely made any but the
briefest attempts at conversation with her, and after the first evening
she showed no disposition to have him do so.
Instead of rousing from the depression which had overfallen her, she
seemed, for a time, to sink the more deeply into it. Silent, listless,
almost sullen, she passed her days. There was but little incentive for
her to go down into the village, and she took small interest in the
miners' wives who dwelt there. For a time she was curious to see Mrs.
Hanson, but, learning through Hughie that that lady lived up near her
mine on a mountainside two miles out of the village, and only
occasionally, and at irregular intervals, visited the camp, Pearl
realized the difficulties in the way of catching a glimpse of her and
contented herself with Bob Flick's description of her.
Her mother wrote to her about once a week, brief, ill-spelled letters,
always with an ardent inclosure from Hanson, and Pearl would lie out on
the hillside during the long summer days reading, and re-reading them,
and at night she slept with them next her heart. For the first few
months Hanson was content to write to her and to extract what comfort he
could from her notes to her mother. These he invested with cryptic and
hidden meanings endeavoring to find a veiled message for himself in
every line.
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