“Your dog, I mean. Surely she is old.”
“No. She got like that—up—”
“‘I suppose you think I have something very valuable here?’”
He still clutched the oilskin with such anxious hands that Hildegarde felt it mere humanity to win him to forget his fears. So she looked away from the gaunt figure, over the threshold and over the surf to where the white sails of the Beluga shone.
“I’ve been ‘up yonder,’ too,” she said.
“What!”
“Yes, I’ve seen the North Siberian shore quite plain. I’ve been as far as the Bering Straits.”
“Oh, the Bering Straits!” he echoed, as one inwardly amused at a traveler who should boast of getting as far as the adjoining county.