Quick Action Part 47

"Oh, I will," she nodded seriously. "What else am I to do?"

"Would you mind preparing dinner?"

She looked up at him a little shyly: "No.... And I am very glad that I am not to dine alone."

"So am I," he said. "And I am very glad that it is with _you_ I am to dine."

"You never even looked at me in the galleries," she said.

"Then--how could I know you were reading Valdez if I never looked at you?"

"Oh, you may have looked at the _book_ I was reading."

"I did," he said, "--and at the hands that held it."

"Never dreaming that they meant to wield a pick-axe," she laughed, "and encompa.s.s your discomfiture. But after all they did neither the one nor the other; did they?"

He looked at the smooth little hands cupped in the shallow pockets of her white flannel Norfolk. They fascinated him.

"To think," he said, half to himself, "--to think of those hands wielding a pick-axe!"

She smiled, head slightly on one side, and bent, contemplating her right hand.

"You know," she said, "I certainly would have done it."

"You would have been crippled in an hour."

Her head went up, but she was still smiling as she said: "I'd have gone through with it--somehow."

"Yes," he said slowly. "I believe you would."

"Not," she added, blus.h.i.+ng, "that I mean to vaunt myself or my courage----"

"No: I understand. You are not that kind.... It's rather extraordinary how well I--I _think_ I know you already."

"Perhaps you _do_ know me--already."

"I really believe I do."

"It's very likely. I am just what I seem to be. There is no mystery about me. I am what I appear to be."

"You are also very direct."

"Yes. It's my nature to be direct. I am not a bit politic or diplomatic or circuitous."

"So I noticed," he said smilingly, "when you discussed finance with me.

You were not a bit politic."

She smiled, too, a little embarra.s.sed: "How could I be anything but frank in return for your very unworldly generosity?" she said. "Because what you offered _was_ unworldly. Anyway, I should have been direct with you; I knew what I wanted; I knew what you wanted. All I had to do was to make up my mind. And I did so."

"Did you make up your mind about me, also?"

"Yes, about you, also."

They both smiled.

She was so straight and slender and pretty in her white flannels and white outing hat--her att.i.tude so confident, so charmingly determined, that she seemed to him even younger than she really was--a delightful, illogical, fresh and fearless school-girl, translated by some flash of magic from her school hither, and set down unruffled and unstartled upon her light, white-shod feet.

Even now it amazed him to realise that she really understood nothing of the lonely perils lately confronting her in this desolate place.

For if there were nothing actually to fear from the wild beasts of the region, _that which the beasts themselves feared_ might have confronted her at any moment. He shuddered as he thought of it.

And what would she have done if suddenly clutched by fever? What would she have done if a white-mouthed moccasin had struck her ankle--or if it had been the diamond-set Death himself?

"You don't mind my speaking plainly, do you?" he said bluntly.

"Why, no, of course not." She looked at him inquiringly.

"Don't stray far away from me, will you?"

"What?"

"Don't wander away by yourself, out of sight, while we are engaged in this business."

She looked serious and perplexed for a moment, then turned a delicate pink and began to laugh in a pretty, embarra.s.sed way.

"Are you afraid I'll get into mischief? Do you know it is very kind of you to feel that way?... And rather unexpected--in a man who--sat for three days across the aisle from me--and never even looked in my direction. Tell me, what am I to be afraid of in this place?"

"There are snakes about," he said with emphasis.

"Oh, yes; I've seen some swimming."

"There are four poisonous species among them," he continued. "That's one of the reasons for your keeping near me."

She nodded, a trifle awed.

"So you will, won't you?"

"Yes," she said, taking his words so literally that, when they turned to walk toward the tents, she came up close beside him, navely as a child, and laid one hand on his sleeve as they started back across the Causeway.

"Suppose either one of us is bitten?" she asked after a silence.

"I have lancets, tourniquets, and anti-venom in my tent."

Her smooth hand tightened a little on his arm. She had not realised that the danger was more than a vague possibility.

"You have spring water, of course," he said.

"No.... I boiled a little from the swamp before I drank it."