“I suppose I was as far from your thoughts as your expectation,” he suggested.
“How should I be thinking of a person who had not written to me for so long I thought he had forgotten me?” she asked, and then as he broke out into a delighted laugh at her expense she grew as, pink as her flowers and seemed to welcome the return of Sam bearing a trayful of Sue's good things to eat.
Fried chicken and sweet potatoes, beaten biscuit and fragrant coffee, had a flavour all their own to Burns that night. He ate as a hungry man should, yet never forgot his companion for a moment or allowed her to imagine that he forgot her. And by and by the meal was over and the two rose from the table.
“I must go and see that Auntie is comfortable for the night, if you will excuse me for half an hour,” said the person he had come to see. “Will you wait in the drawing-room? I will have Sam bring you some late magazines.”
“I'll wait, and no magazines, thank you. I can fill the time somehow,” he answered. “But don't let it be more than the half-hour, will you?”
He watched her until she disappeared from his sight at the turn of the staircase landing, then went in to pace up and down the long room, his left arm folded over his right, after the fashion he had acquired since the right arm became useless. After what seemed an interminable interval she came back. He met her at the door.
“Are the duties all done?” he inquired.
“All done for the present. I must look in on Auntie by and by, but I think she is going to sleep.”
“May she sleep the sleep of the just! And there's nothing more you feel it incumbent upon you to do for me? No more sending me to my room, no more waiting upon me by Sam, no more feeding me till my capacity is reached? Is there really no notion in your mind as to how you can put off the coming hour?”
His voice had its old, whimsical inflection, but there was a deeper note in it, too. She parried him gently, yet not quite so composedly as was her wont.