"I should say the catering of this household runs to extravagance," said her brother, smiling at her.
"Yes, for to-night, it's a case of fatted calf, and besides, I feel money at my back."
In clearing away afterwards, Tom showed himself as handy as any woman. Washing up plates and dishes he declared his speciality!
"But how did you learn it all?" asked Clarissa, pausing in her task of drying the things Tom handed her.
"In the same way you have done, by experience. In the course of my wanderings I have come across many a young fellow as gently nurtured as I am, batching in what I call squalor, so my task has been to put things straight, and keep them tidy and clean, as far as I knew how to do it. I think it lowers a man's self-respect to live in dirt and discomfort, so when any fellow has put me up for a day or two, I've tried to repay his hospitality by the labour of my hands, to make myself worth my keep as I hope to do here, if you will let me."
"But I won't! My augmented income will allow me to have a girl in now and again to do the hard work, and oh! if you knew the joy it is to me to have someone of my very own to look after again. Come along, Eva; it's time for bath and bed, and then, Tom, you and I will sit out in the verandah and talk."
Their conversation lasted far into the night, albeit desultory in character. They made no effort to pick up tangled threads, but Clarissa, nestling against her brother's side, with his protecting arm thrown round her, with the star-spangled sky overhead, and the silence of the night about her, experienced a sense of peace and happiness that had not been hers for years. Her mind went back to the early days at home, and many a childish reminiscence was recalled, over which the brother and sister joined in laughter that had something of pathos in it. And then she spoke of the first bitter trouble of her girlhood, the loss of the mother she adored when she was only twelve years old.
"I can't help feeling that if mother had lived, I never should have come to loggerheads with father. We both should have acted differently. He would have been less hard, and I less stubborn, but it's curious how the knowledge that he is dead has changed my own point of view. To-day I've felt myself more to blame than he. I wish I had taken dear George's advice, and offered to go back. Even if he had refused to have me, I should feel now that I had made some effort towards reconciliation."
"He would not have refused," Tom said. "I believe he was hungering after you in his inmost heart, but it's no use going back on the past. It only saps your energy for present action. If you made a mistake, dear, you've paid for it heavily, and God in His goodness can make even our mistakes stepping stones to lead us up to Him."
"I don't feel as if I had even begun to climb," said Clarissa, in a whisper.