He was at the foot of the stairs, and, waiting for her to get down, watched her hand on the banister. The wood was dark and the hand was white and slender. Then he held out a big, checked apron. She walked into it and looked over her shoulder while he tied the strings behind.
It takes time to set a table when neither is just certain where things are to be found. Hunting together in sideboard, cupboards, and on pantry shelves brings about a feeling of knowing each other very well. There was so much, too, to talk about.
“Do you remember—” it was Alexina pausing with a goblet in hand to ask it.
“Have you forgot—” King, producing a carving set, would rejoin.
Presently she paused. Twice she started to speak, hesitated, then said, “There’s a thing I want to ask you, or, rather, want to say—” Her voice was a little tremulous and breathless.
“Yes.”
“You remember—that is, you haven’t forgot the ‘King William’?”
She was looking away from him and he looking at her, his mouth odd, yet smiling, too. She was an honest and a pleasant thing to look upon. “Yes,” he told her, “as well as I remember the raft we put off on from the desert island and the plains back of the stable—have you forgotten the trackless plains where we sat down to starve in the snow, with never a sign of deer or buffalo for days, or even a thing on wing? We’d just lighted on Hiawatha those days. There was an Indian, by the way, came up from the grass water yesterday and brought us venison for to-day.”
It was evident he did not mean to let her return to the subject.
Presently Alexina untied the apron. “I must see your mother some,” she said.