“We won the first round,” he said to her once. “We got them into the hills, and you know how near a thing that was. Well, we’re not done, and we might win through yet—might win through yet.”
“If only the rain would come,” she said, looking out on the aching sun glare. “I’m so tired of the sun and things.”
“You’re looking worn,” he said kindly. “You mustn’t let it get you down, my dear. It’s not much of a place for a woman, I know, and I wouldn’t let my own come into it just now. They’d be willing enough to come if I’d let them, but it’ll be time enough for that when I can’t afford to send them down to the sea for the summer. They tell me they’ve had good showers again round the coast.”
“Oh, and not a drop here,” she cried. “Isn’t it hard?”
“It’s hard, it’s hard,” he said. “But it’s a hard country, one way and another.”
“I’ve heard that before, so often,” she said, “and I’m beginning to see it for myself. I wonder you don’t try to find a station where the seasons and the country are kindlier.”
“We’re like they say a sailor gets about the sea,” he said. “We curse it at times, but we get it in our bones, and we wouldn’t live happy away from it. And it’s not always like this. It can batter a man to his knees one time, and, if he has grit to keep on fighting, as like as not it turns round and lifts him to his feet, and showers treasure on him with both hands. A blow and a kiss, my dear—a blow and a kiss.”
“And can one still love the thing—or the one—that gives the blow?” she said in a low voice. She was thinking of another blow. He looked keenly and long at her.
“Yes,” he said softly, in tones to match her own; “and—it’s queer enough we’re built perhaps, but so that the kiss does come, we may love the giver the more for the blow that came before.”
“I wonder,” she said absently.