“Oh, did you bring any letters for me?” she cried eagerly.
He held out the two he had kept in his hand.
“Oh, goodness, Nat––only from mama and Lutie Bissell. You excited me so!”
He spread a tarpaulin amid the clutter amidships and they sat down.
She excused herself and began to read her letters, first opening the one from the girl friend, which, as such letters usually do, contained nothing of importance. Then she opened the one from her mother. It was long, and she settled back to the pleasure of deciphering it.
Nat smoked and whistled and looked out to sea, waiting for her to finish. Therefore he did not observe the changes that passed across her face. Near the middle of the letter the color rose to her forehead in a hot wave, but at the end it had receded, leaving her pale. Methodically she folded the letter and returned it to its envelope.
“Well, dearest,” he said cheerfully, “all through? Now I want to talk to you––” He reached for her hand, but she withdrew it beyond his reach and looked at him with the steady brown eyes whose level gaze he hated.
“Come on, now, Nellie,” he said impatiently, stung by her relentlessness, “you ain’t goin’ to be mad forever about that other time, are you? I was out of temper an’ said things––”