“Mother’s gone in,” she said, evidently making these small domestic comments more to herself than to him, “and Rosamund’s getting supper.”
“How do you know that?” he asked, glad to be shaken from his thoughts. “Have you got second sight? You’re such a little witch I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if you had.”
“You don’t have to be a witch to see the smoke coming out of the chimney.”
A faint reek of smoke curled up from the cottage roof into the evening air. The Colonel looked at her with a sheepish side-glance. She returned it, smiling in mischievous triumph.
“I’m afraid we’re not both witches,” she said saucily.
The rest over, they continued their descent by a wider path in parts of which they walked side by side, talking together sometimes, or June talking, for she was very loquacious now, while her companion listened. At the end of a description of their life in Virginia City he said,
“How long is it since you’ve been in San Francisco? Years, isn’t it?”
“Oh, years and years. I was born there, but we left when I was a child.”
“It must have been a prodigious length of time ago—in the glacial period, you might say. Sometime you and Rosamund must come down there and visit me. I’ll find a place for you to stay, and take good care of you. Would you like it?”
“Oh, Colonel Parrish!” Words failed her. The path was wide and she was walking beside him. He saw her eyes shine.