"But he will not be there this time!"
And now his voice, in a transport that seemed to touch the cloud heights, was neither like the voice of the easy traveller on the pass, nor the voice of his sharp call to Leddy to disarm, nor the voice of the storyteller. It had a new note, a note startling to her.
"We shall be on the pass without Leddy and smiling over Leddy and thanking him for his unwitting service in making me stop in Little Rivers," he concluded.
"Yes, he did that," she admitted stoically, as if it were some oppressive fact for which she could offer no thanks.
"I want to see our ponies with their bridles hanging loose! I want the great silence! I want company, with imagination speaking from the sky and reality speaking from the patch of green out on the sea of gray! Will you?"
Their steps ran rhythmically together. His look was eager in anticipation, while she kept on running the leaves of the austere Marcus through her fingers. Her lips were half open, as if about to speak, but were without words; the thin, delicate nostrils trembled.
"Will you? Will you, because I kept the faith of callouses? Will you go forth and dream for a day? We'll tell fairy stories! We'll get a pole and prod the dinosaur through the narrow part of the pass and hear him roar his awfullest. Will you?"
Her fingers paused in the pages as if they had found a helpful passage. The chin tilted upward resolutely and he had a full view of her eyes, dancing with challenging lights. She was augustly, gloriously mischievous.
"Will you go in costume? Will you wear your spurs and the chaps and the silk shirt?"
The question said that it was not a time to be serious. It sprinkled the crest of the barrier with gleaming slivers of glass, which might give zest to words spoken across it, but would be most sharp to the touch.