“That, at any rate, doesn’t matter.”
“The change in father this morning is marvelous. It made me know that we’re doing right—however strange it seems.”
“Does it seem strange to you?”
“It certainly is—unusual.”
“Yes, I suppose it is and yet it isn’t anything more than the road led me to expect.”
“That’s what it is to be a man,” she smiled. “Women are allowed to expect so little.”
He was studying her mouth. It was so simply and yet so marvelously drawn. He had decided it was a child’s mouth, but at this he glanced up quickly.
“And yet,” he said, “women are the mothers of expectancy.”
She turned away her head without replying. She was a bit shy of his loose generalizing. She brought him back again to her father. She made vivid to him the days of close comradeship she had passed with the old gentleman during these last two years. After this he led her out to tell him more of the neighbors and of her life among them. He listened for the names and made it a point to fix them in his mind. Among them as she rambled on there was one Carl Langdon, he noted, who stood out a bit more than the others. Langdon it seemed, played a violin and she herself was musical. He refused to satisfy his curiosity by pressing any further along this line than she of her own accord led him. Yet, as it was, there were several little things about Langdon which excited his interest.
Before they knew it, they reached the beginning of the descent which led into the village of white houses huddled at the foot of the surrounding hills, like sheep pressing warm sides together against a blizzard. At the glimpse of the steel path of the railroad, Barnes impulsively turned away.