“My father thinks I waste all my time,” he assured her. “But that is because he doesn’t know. I rather think he would give me credit for doing a little better than usual at present.”
“I wish it were possible to return to him your kindness to my father.”
“Perhaps,” he faltered, “the opportunity will come.”
“If it would,” she cried eagerly.
“I’ll let you know if it does,” he replied.
She raised her eyes to his. Then she lowered them. For a fraction of a second she felt as she had when the Dutch door closed upon her.
“I’m beginning to marvel,” he mused, “how often the little incidents of life turn out to be the big ones. Every decision we make is like drawing at straws held in the hand of Fate. The ends are all even and we can’t tell until afterwards—years afterwards, perhaps—whether we have drawn the short straw or the long straw.”
Without at all thinking what she was about, she wrote upon her pad, “Long straw.”
“And we draw,” he concluded, “every minute of our lives.”
While her eyes were lowered upon the paper (she was working a scroll about the sentence) he leaned forward a little. Three days ago Fate had held out to him two straws; one was the road to the next village, the other was the road to this house. He had drawn, he thought, the short one, but was it so? Was it so?