"Yes, back—back to armies of Leddys!" he said slowly.
But this she saw as still another pose. It did not make her pause in gathering up her sewing. She was convinced that there was nothing more for her to say, except to give their parting an appearance of ease and unconcern.
"Is it work you mean? You are not used to that, I take it?" she inquired a little sarcastically.
"Yes, call it work," he answered, looking away from the spectres and back to her.
"And you have never done any work!" she added.
"Not much," he admitted, with his old, airy carelessness. He was smiling at the spectres now, as he had at the dinosaur.
"As there is nothing particular about the garden that I can show you—" she was moving away.
"No, I will be walking back to the house," he said after she had taken a few steps. "Will you wait on my slow pace?"
He reached for his crutches, lifted himself to his feet and swung to her side. She who wished that the interview were over saw that it must be prolonged. Then suddenly she realized the weakness as well as the brusqueness of her attitude. She had been about to fly from him as from something that she feared. It was not necessary. It was foolish, even cowardly.
"I thought perhaps you preferred to be alone, you seemed so abstracted," she said, lamely; and then, as they came out into the sunlight in the circle, she began talking of the garden as she would to any visitor; of its beginnings, its growth, and its future, when her father's plans should have been fulfilled.