"Well, somehow you spoke as if you were."
"No, I didn't; I only said how dear Mr. Burton was, and he IS. How silly you are! Come—we will be late for the camp."
They both walked on in silence, now, he ahead this time, brushing aside the thick undergrowth that blocked the path.
The exultant tones in her voice which had hurt her companion, and which had escaped her unconsciously, still rang in her own ears. She felt ashamed of the outburst now as she watched him cutting the branches ahead of her, and thought how gentle and tender he had always been to her and how watchful over her comfort. She wondered at the cause of her frequent discontent. Then, like an evil spirit that would not down, there arose in her mind, as she walked on, the picture she had formed of Kennedy Square. She thought of his mother's imperious nature absorbing all the love of his heart and inspiring and guiding his every action and emotion; of the unpractical father—a dreamer and an enthusiast, the worst possible example he could have; of the false standards and class distinctions which had warped his early life and which were still dominating him. With an abrupt gesture of impatience she stood still in the path and looked down upon the ground. An angry flush suffused her face.
"What a stupid fool you are, Margaret Grant," she burst out impatiently. "What are Kennedy Square and the whole Horn family to you?"
Oliver's halloo brought her to consciousness.
"Here's that slant, Margaret—oh, such a lovely spot! Hurry up."
"The slant" had been built between two great trees and stood on a little mound of earth surrounded by beds of velvety green moss—huge green winding sheets, under which lay the bodies of many giant pines and hemlocks. The shelter was made of bark and bedded down with boughs of sweet-balsam. Outside, on a birch sapling, supported by two forked sticks, hung a rusty kettle. Beneath the rude spit, half-hidden by the growth of the summer, lay the embers of the abandoned camp-fires that had warmed and comforted Hank and his companions the preceding winter.
Oliver raked the charred embers from under the tangled vines that hid them, while Margaret peeled the bark from a silver-birch for kindling. Soon a curl of blue smoke mounted heavenward, hung suspended over the tree-tops, and then drifted away in scarfs of silver haze dimming the forms of the giant trunks.
Our young enthusiast watched the Diaz of a wood interior turn slowly into a Corot, and with a cry of delight was about to unstrap his own and Margaret's sketching-kits, when the sun was suddenly blotted out by a heavy cloud, and the quick gloom of a mountain-storm chilling the sunlit vista to a dull slate gray settled over the forest. Oliver walked over to the brook for a better view of the sky, and came back bounding over the moss-covered logs as he ran. There was not a moment to lose if they would escape being drenched to the skin.