"Shall you be here this winter?"
"I don't know about that. I don't know just how long it will take for the survey."
"But you will be here while they build the dam, too, won't you? And that will take years. Won't you live here a long time?"
"The dam is not a fixed fact as yet, you know; far from it."
"Isn't it? Every one talks as if it were,—that is, every one except Alva."
"But I couldn't live in that house, anyway; I wouldn't live there for anything, would you?"
"No, it would be full of ghosts to me. I'd feel about it just as you—" the words died on her lips, as she suddenly realized how their unconscious phrasing sounded. It was the first sunburst of the idea to her, and it stormed her cheeks with pink.
"No," said Ingram, unobserving, "that house would not affect any one but you or I, in that way; but for us—" thereupon he stopped; the idea which had come over the girl like a sunburst came over the man like a cloudburst. He was almost scared as he tried to think what he had said.
"Alva is—is—so set against it—the dam, I mean," he stammered, hurriedly; "she—she has—told me all her views."
"But she's different," said Lassie, catching her breath. "I don't know very much, but I know that it doesn't look just that way to others."