It wasn’t. For two weeks more I was driven to using other pens—strange and distracting to the fingers and the eyes and the mind. Then Jonathan was to go up again.
“Please look once more,” I begged, “and don’t expect not to see it. I can fairly see it myself, this minute, standing up there on the right-hand side, just behind the machine oil can.”
“Oh, I’ll look,” he promised. “If it’s there, I’ll find it.”
He returned penless. I considered buying another. But we were planning to go up together the last week of the hunting season, and I thought I would wait on the chance.
We got off at the little station and hunted our way up, making great sweeps and jogs, as hunters must, to take in certain spots we thought promising—certain ravines and swamp edges where we are always sure of hearing the thunderous whir of partridge wings, or the soft, shrill whistle of woodcock. [pg 020] At noon we broiled chops and rested in the lee of the wood edge, where, even in the late fall, one can usually find spots that are warm and still. It was dusk by the time we came over the crest of the farm ledges and saw the huddle of the home buildings below us, and quite dark when we reached the house. Fires had been made and coals smouldered on the hearth in the sitting-room.
“You light the lamp,” I said, “and I’ll just take a match and go through to see if that pen should happen to be there.”
“No use doing anything to-night,” said Jonathan. “To-morrow morning you can have a thorough hunt.”
But I took my match, felt my way into the next room, past the fireplace, up to the cupboard, then struck my match. In its first flare-up I glanced in. Then I chuckled.
Jonathan had gone out to the dining-room, but he has perfectly good ears.
“NO!” he roared, and his tone of dismay, incredulity, rage, sent me off into gales of unscrupulous laughter. He was striding in, candle in hand, shouting, “It was not there!”