Many times when the three were together, and
the talk, guided by Kitty, led far from Phil's world, the cowboy would
sit a silent listener, until Patches would skillfully turn the current
back to the land of Granite Mountain and the life in which Phil had so
vital a part.
In the home-life at the Cross-Triangle, too, Patches gradually came to
hold his own peculiar place. His cheerful helpfulness, and gentle,
never-failing courtesy, no less than the secret pain and sadness that
sometimes, at some chance remark, drove the light from his face and
brought that wistful look into his eyes, won Mrs. Baldwin's heart. Many
an evening under his walnut trees, with Stella and Phil and Curly and
Bob and Little Billy near, the Dean was led by the rare skill and ready
wit of Patches to open the book of his kindly philosophy, as he talked
of the years that were past. And sometimes Patches himself, yielding to
temptation offered by the Dean, would speak in such vein that the older
man came to understand that this boy, as he so often called him, had
somewhere, somehow, already experienced that Gethsemane which soon or
late--the Dean maintains--leaves its shadow upon us all.
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