He listened with great interest, although without comment, meanwhile gazing abstractedly out of the Pullman car window until Eleanor began to wonder if he heard one word she said, and, if the truth must be confessed, was not a little piqued at his seeming unconcern.
As usual, when thinking deeply, he munched away upon something. This time it happened to be a long spiral of paper he had absently torn from a magazine and twisted into a lamplighter, and Eleanor found herself subconsciously wondering how much of it would disappear before he recovered his wits and spoke.
About four inches of it had vanished, and, had Mammy been present, her theory of the goat would surely have been substantiated, when he gave his paper fodder a toss, and, turning toward her, said:
“Don’t sign that contract until you get home and have thought it over a week. Then if you do sign it, do so for six months—one term—only.”
“But,” interrupted Eleanor, “that seems to me a most improvident step, for right in the dead of the winter it would leave me without occupation or the prospect of any.”
“No, it wouldn’t, either. Do you think I would suggest such a step if I didn’t have something up my sleeve for you a mighty sight better—er, ahem! I mean if I hadn’t been on the lookout for something desirable—or, or, at least, something I feel you would consider.”
“What is it?” was Eleanor’s very natural and direct question.
“Eh? Ah, well, er—a little enterprise, a scheme, a—er—What station is this we’re drawing into?” and this discussion was sidetracked instantly, leaving Eleanor to wonder if Forbes had lost his senses.
She had been home a little more than a week when he asked her to take a walk with him, and had led her a wild scramble to the top of the mountain to the plateau heretofore mentioned, where he unfolded a plan which caused Eleanor to collapse upon a nearby rock and sit looking at him in a bewildered manner. Again and again during the ensuing weeks had they toiled up the mountain, and each time had returned grimy, gratified and garrulous, heads nodding, hands gesticulating and oblivious of any other human being on top of the round world.
Mrs. Carruth watched developments with resignation; Constance with open amusement; Mammy with a division between tolerance and contempt—the saving grace in the cause being that Forbes could remotely claim kinship with the Blairsdales. But it was upon Jean that the effect was the funniest. Jean had spent all her life with people older than herself. There had been no little children in her home, and her interests had naturally centered upon her older sisters and around their affairs. She had a wise little head upon her fourteen-year-old shoulders, and older people would have been somewhat surprised could they have known the “long, long thoughts” which passed through it. More than once had she seen Forbes and Eleanor start off and toil up the mountain, and more than once had she been an unobserved follower. She never followed close enough to overhear their conversation; that would have been contrary to her sense of honor. Still, she was determined to know where they went, and, if her eyes could inform her, why they went, and her deductions came nearer the mark than the two would have believed possible.