‘The life wasn’t hard; it was rather wonderful,’ he said simply. ‘I liked it.’
‘For a time perhaps; but you must have had curious experiences and lived with very rough people in those—lumber camp places you wrote about.’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Simple kind of men, but very decent, very genuine. Few signs of city polish, I admit, but then you know I never cared for frills, Margaret.’
‘Frills!’ she exclaimed, without any expression on her face. ‘Of course not. Still, I am very glad you have left it all. The life must often have been unsuitable and lonely; one always felt that for you. You can’t have had any of the society that one’s accustomed to.’
‘Not of that kind,’ he put in hurriedly with a short laugh, ‘but of other kinds. I struck a pretty good crowd of men on the whole.’
She turned her face slightly away from him; her eyes, he divined, had been fixed for a moment on his hands. For the first time in his life he realised that they were large and rough and brown. Her own were so pale and dainty—like china hands, glossy and smooth—and the gold bangle on her thin wrist looked as though every second it must slip over her fingers. His own hands disappeared swiftly into the pockets of his coat.
She turned to him with a gentle smile. ‘Anyhow,’ she said, ‘it is simply too delightful to know that you really are here at last. It must seem strange to you at first, and there are so many things to talk over—such a lot to tell. I want to hear all your plans. You’ll get used to us after a bit, and there are lots of nice people in the neighbourhood who are dying to meet you.’
Her brother felt inclined to explain that he had no wish to interfere with their ‘dying’; but, instead, he returned her smile. ‘I’m a poor hand at meeting people, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I’m not as sociable as I might be.’
‘But you’ll get over that. Of course, living so long in the backwoods makes one unsociable. But we’ll try and make you happy and comfortable. You have no idea how very, very glad I am that you’ve come home.’
Paul believed her. He leaned over and patted her hand, and she smiled frankly and sweetly in his face. She was a very shadowy sort of personality, he felt. If he blew hard she might blow away altogether, or disappear like a soap-bubble.