"She'll not thank you," said old Martha. "Ye may safely leave that to me."
"And if she isn't a real help to you, Martha, she goes. Another thing, I'd rather she didn't talk very loud or sing, if she can help it. I don't want to know that she's here."
To Martha's discerning and suspicious eyes the Poor Boy seemed nervous, ill at ease, and eager to be off somewhere. He was dressed for deep snow-going, and kept swinging his mittens by the wrists and beating them together. He stood much on one foot and much on the other.
"What's vexing you?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said. "I've found something off here," he waved toward the valley, "that amuses me—just a silly game, Martha, that goes on in my head. The minute I get out of sight of the house it begins. It's done it every day since you left."
"What kind of a game will that be?"
"It's just making believe," he said with a certain embarrassment, "pretending things—and it makes me forget other things. I'll be back by dark."
He literally bolted, and could be heard saying sharp things to the straps of his skis, which had become stiffened with the cold.
Old Martha stood for a while staring at the door which he had closed behind him. She wondered if by any possible chance his mind was beginning to go. To relieve her own she hurried back to Joy in the kitchen, and began a conversation that had not flagged by tea-time.
The Poor Boy had found a long diagonal by which he could descend from the top of the cliff to the bottom in one swift silent slide. More than half-way down there was a dangerous turn, but he had learned to ski at St. Moritz when he was little, and never thought of the danger at all. The chief thing, turn or no turn, was to get to the bottom of the cliff as quickly as possible. Everything that was bitter and tragic in his life ended there, in an open glade among towering white pines.