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“Don’t say another word, Claire,” he said gently. “Maybe I understand the thing lying back of your mind. Forget my break. It was a bad one, and I shouldn’t have made it, but—but I sort of just had to. I won’t do it again. There isn’t some other feller, is there?”

The girl laughed happily in her relief at his manner.

“Not a soul,” she cried, unhesitatingly.

“That’s all right.” The man’s eyes smiled responsively. “I can wait. I’m going to, and I’ll make no more bad breaks. And maybe when you’ve hit your adventures, and kind of tired of them, and feel you’d like the rest you’ll have maybe earned, why I’ll be waiting around, and I’ll surely be ready to hand it you when you raise a finger, a sign. An’ meanwhile, my dear, I’d be glad to have you feel ther’s no sort of trouble in the world so big I wouldn’t be glad to smooth out for you.” He suddenly spread out his muscular hands. “These two hands are for you, night or day, all the time, and I’ve two ears that’ll hear the faintest whisper of trouble that’s worrying you. Say, come along right down. Your mother’s crazy to talk your Jim to you and she asked me to bring you to home.”