But Martha’s voice directly behind her, reassured her.
“They ain’t a soul here, honey—not a soul. You’ve got the whole house to yo’self. This am a lark—shuah enough. He, he, he!”
It was the voice of the temptress—and Marion heeded it. With a defiant toss of her head she entered the room, took off her hat, laid it on a convenient table, calmly telling Martha to do the same. Then she went boldly from one room to another, finally coming to a halt in the doorway of the room that had been occupied by her father.
For her that room seemed to hallow the place. It was as though her father were here with her; as though there were no need of Martha being here with her. The thought of it removed any stigma that might have been attached to her coming; it made her heedless of the opinion of the world and its gossip-mongers.
She forgot the world in her interest, and for more than an hour, with Martha sitting in a chair sympathetically watching her, she reveled in the visible proofs of her father’s occupancy of the room.
Later she and Martha went out on the porch, where, seated in rocking-chairs—that had not been on the porch the day before—she filled her mental vision with pictures of her father’s life at the Arrow. Those pictures were imaginary, but they were intensely satisfying to the girl who had loved her father, for she could almost see him moving about her.
“You shuah does look soft an’ dreamy, honey,” Martha told her once. “You looks jes’ like a delicate ghost. A while ago, lookin’ at you, I shuah was scared you was goin’ to blow away!”
But Marion was not the ethereal wraith that Martha thought her. She proved that a little later, when, with the negro woman abetting her, she went into the house and prepared dinner. For she ate so heartily that Martha was forced to amend her former statement.
“For a ghost you shuah does eat plenty, honey,” she said.
Later they were out on the porch again. The big level on the other side of the river was flooded with a slumberous sunshine, with the glowing, rose haze of early afternoon enveloping it, and the girl was enjoying it when there came an interruption.