"I just like being out of doors," she said carelessly. "And it's all the more odd as I was always wanting to hurry on and catch up the large train."
This was a grinding in of the heel. The large train into which the Gillespies were to be absorbed and an end brought to their independent journeying, had at first loomed gloomily before David's vision. But of late it had faded from the conversation and his mind. The present was so good it must continue, and he had come to accept that first bright dream of his in which he and Susan were to go riding side by side across the continent as a permanent reality. His timidity was swept away in a rush of stronger feeling and he sat erect, looking sharply at her:
"I thought you'd given up the idea of joining with that train?"
Susan raised the eyebrows of mild surprise:
"Why did you think that?"
"You've not spoken of it for days."
"That doesn't prove anything. There are lots of important things I don't speak of."
"You ought to have spoken of that."
The virile note of authority was faint in his words, the first time Susan had ever heard it. Her foot was in a fair way to be withdrawn from the slave's neck. The color in her cheeks deepened and it was she who now dropped her eyes.
"We had arranged to join the train long before we left Rochester," she answered. "Everybody said it was dangerous to travel in a small party. Dr. Whitman told my father that."