Sam followed up his advantage royally. "I can work 'em both to onct!" he exclaimed triumphantly. And did so. "There! They was a boy in our school onct that could work his airs one at a time, but I never did see no one else but me that could work 'em both to onct. Look a-here!" He waggled his ears ecstatically. The reserve of Nora oozed, waned, vanished.
Even, the sternest fibre must at length succumb under prolonged Herculean endeavour. No man may long continuously wag his ears, even alternately; therefore Sam perforce paused in time. Yet by that time—in what manner it occurred no one may know—Nora was seated on the chair next to him at the table. They were alone. Silence fell. Nora's hand moved nervously among the spoons. Upon it dropped the mutilated one of Sam.
"Nory," said he, "I'd—I'd work 'em all my life—fer you!" And to Nora, who turned away her head now, not for the purpose of hiding a smile, this seemed always a perfectly fit and proper declaration of this man's regard.
"I know I'm no good," murmured Sam. "I'm a awful coward. I-I-I've l-l-loved you ever sence the fust time that I seen you, but I was such a coward, I—I couldn't—couldn't—"
"You're not!" cried Nora imperiously.
"Oh, yes, I am," said Sam.
"Look at them," said Nora, almost touching his crippled fingers.
"Don't I know?"
"Oh, that," said Sam, hiding the hand under the droop of the tablecloth. "Why, that? I got froze some, a-drivin'."
"Yes, and," said Nora accusingly, "how did you get froze? A-drivin' 'way down there, in the storm, after folks. No one else'd go."
"Why, yes. Cap Franklin, he went," said Sam. "That wasn't nothin'.
Why, o' course we'd go."