The Voice of the People Part 27

"Where is he?"

"Uncle Ish? He's on the road."

Her next remark probed deeper, and he winced.

"What were you doing with it?"

Her gaze was warming upon him. He met it and laughed aloud.

"Toting it," he responded lightly.

She was still warming. He saw the glow kindle in her eyes and illumine her sombre face; it was like the leaping of light to the surface. As she stood midway of the entrance, in a frame of unpolished logs, her white and black beauty against the smoky gloom of the interior, the red sunset before her feet, he recalled swiftly an allegorical figure of Night he had once seen in an old engraving. Then, before the charm of her smile, the recollection pa.s.sed as it had come.

"You may bring in the bag," she said, with the authority of one accustomed to much service. "I found he had very little left to eat. We have to bring him things secretly, and he pretends the Lord feeds him as He fed the prophet."

She reentered the hut, and Nicholas, stepping lightly in the fear that his weight might hasten the fall of the logs, deposited the bag upon a pine table, where an ash cake lay ready for the embers. In a little cupboard he saw the contents of Eugenia's basket--a cold fried chicken and some coffee and sugar. Before the hearth there was a comfortable rocking chair, and a bright coloured quilt was upon the bed. As he turned away the girl spoke swiftly:

"It _was_ good of you," she said.

"Good of me?" He met her approbation almost haughtily; then he impulsively added: "I always liked Uncle Ish--and he reminds me of old times."

She turned frankly to him. In the n.o.ble poise of her head she had seemed strangely far off; now she appeared to stoop.

"Of our old times?"

Her cordial eyes arrested him.

"Of yours and mine," he answered. "Do you remember the hare traps he set for us and the straw mats he taught us to plait? Once you said you had stolen a watermelon to save Jake a whipping, and he found you out--do you remember?"

He pressed the recollections upon her eagerly, almost violently.

Eugenia shook her head, half laughing.

"No, no," she said; "but I remember you carried me home once when I had hurt my foot, and you jumped into the ice pond to save my kitten, and--"

"You shared your lunch with me at school," he broke in.

"And you dug me a little garden all yourself--"

"And you bought me a Jew's harp on my birthday--"

"And you always left half the eggs in a bird's nest because I begged you to--"

"And you were an out and out angel," he concluded triumphantly.

"An angel, black-haired and a tomboy?"

He a.s.sented. "A little tyrannical angel with a temper."

Her confessions multiplied.

"I scratched your face once."

"Yes."

"I got mad and smashed your best hawk's egg."

"You did."

"I threw your fis.h.i.+ng line into the brook when you wouldn't let me fish."

"I have never seen it since."

"I was horrid and mean."

"Such were your angelic characteristics."

She thoughtfully swung the basket on her arm, her white sleeve fluttering above her wrist. Her head, with its wave, from the clear brow, of dead-black hair, was bent frankly towards him.

"It has been so long since I saw you," she said suddenly, "and when I last saw you, you were horrid, not I."

He flushed quickly.

"I was a brute," he admitted.

"And you hurt me so, I cried all night."

"Not because you cared?" he asked breathlessly.

"Of course not--because I didn't care a--a rap. I cried for the fun of it."

He was sufficiently abashed.

"If I had known--" he began, and stopped.

"You might have known!" she flashed out.

He was at a disadvantage, which he admitted by a blank regard.

"But things were desperate then, and--"

"So were you."

"Not as desperate as I might have been."

In her equable unconsciousness she threw off the meaning of his retort.

"But I like desperateness."