Part 31 (1/2)
”Seeing that it's six weeks since I left it, and that I have been traveling night and day since I landed, you are rather hard on the old country.”
So she answered him, her fingers in the tea caddy, and her eyes with them. The lamplight shone upon her freckles as Swift studied her anxiously. Perhaps, as she hinted, she was only tired.
”I say, I can't have you making tea for me!” Swift exclaimed nervously.
”You are worn out, and I am accustomed to doing all this sort of thing for myself.”
”Then you will have the kindness to unaccustom yourself! I am mistress here until papa is fit to be moved.”
And not a day longer. He knew it by the way she avoided his eyes. Yet he was forced to make conversation.
”Why do you warm the teapot?”
”It is the proper thing to do.”
”I never knew that!”
”I dare say it isn't the only thing you never knew. I shouldn't wonder if you swallowed your coffee with cold milk?”
”Of course we do--when we have coffee.”
”Ah, it is good for you to have a housekeeper for a time,” said Christina cruelly, she did not know why.
”It's my firm belief,” remarked Swift, ”that you have learnt these dodges in England, and that you did _not_ detest the whole thing!”
The words had a far-away familiar sound to Christina, and they were spoken in the pointed accents with which one quotes.
”Did I say I should detest the whole thing?” asked Christina, marking the tablecloth with a fork.
”You did; they were your very words.”
”Come, I don't believe that.”
”I can't help it; those were your words. They were your very last words to me.”
”And you actually remember them?”
She looked at him, smiling; but his face put out her smile, and the wave of compa.s.sion which now swept over hers confirmed the knowledge that had come to him with her first frightened glance.
The storekeeper, who came in before more was said, was the unconscious witness of a well-acted interlude of which he was also the cause. He approved of Miss Luttrell at the tea tray, and was to some extent recompensed for the hard day's work he had not done. He left her with Swift on the back veranda, and they might have been grateful to him, for not only had his advent been a boon to them both at a very awkward moment, but, in going, he supplied them with a topic.
”What has happened to my little Englishman?” Christina asked at once. ”I hoped to find him here still.”
”I wish you had. He was a fine fellow, and this one is not.”
”Then you didn't mean to get rid of my little friend?”
”No. It's a very pretty story,” Swift said slowly, as he watched her in the starlight. ”His father died, and he went home and came in for something; and now that little chap is actually married to the girl he used to talk about!”