At this he brightened very much, but she, as if repenting she had given him so much pleasure, added: “I wanted to say good-bye to my father, you know; and—” she paused.
“And”? he added.
“And to tell him that you have fond relatives in the old land who would mourn your early taking off; and, therefore, to beg him, for their sakes, to keep you safe from any outrageous moose that mightn’t know how the world needed you.”
“But there you are mistaken,” he said; “I haven’t anyone who would really care, worse luck! except the dowager; and she, perhaps, would be consoled to know that I had died in battle,—even with a moose,—and was clear of the possibility of hanging another lost reputation on the family tree, to say nothing of suspension from any other kind of tree. But, if it should be the other way; if I should see your father in the path of an outrageous moose—what then?”
“My father is a hunter born,” she responded; “he is a great man,” she proudly added.
“Of course, of course,” he replied. “Good-bye. I’ll take him your love.—Good-bye!” and he turned away.
“Good-bye,” she gaily replied; and yet, one looking closely would have seen that this stalwart fellow was pleasant to her eyes, and as she closed the door to his hand waving farewell to her from the pines, she said, reflecting on his words:
“You’ll take him my love, will you? But, Master Gregory, you carry a freight of which you do not know the measure; and, perhaps, you never shall, though you are very brave and honest, and not so impudent as you used to be,—and I’m not so sure that I like you so much better for that either, Monsieur Gregory.”
Then she went and laid her cheek against her mother’s, and said: “They’ve gone away for big game, mother dear; what shall be our quarry?”
“My child,” the mother replied, “the story of our lives since last you were with me is my only quarry. I want to know from your own lips all that you have been in that life which once was mine also, but far away from me now, even though you come from it, bringing its memories without its messages.”