Alison gave him a quiet glance and then looked in front. Kit’s brows were knit, and she admitted she was melancholy. She was not a romantic sentimentalist and Kit was not a philanderer; in fact, he had told her something about Evelyn. They were travelling companions who had met by chance, and at Winnipeg their roads went different ways. Yet but for Kit Alison knew she would have been lonely, and some time before morning she must let him go. To think about it disturbed her.
“Where do you start for when we get to Winnipeg?” she asked.
“I think I’ll get off at Harper’s Bar. Gordon, the fellow with the frying-pan, talked about a new bridge and thought the engineer might engage me. Since you made friends of Gordon’s kiddies perhaps I owe you something. You see, I must get a job as soon as possible.”
“I owe you much,” said Alison. “Then the children were your friends.”
“Well, let’s agree they were our friends. I don’t know if mutual debts, so to speak, cancel out, but I hope they do not, and I don’t want to cancel mine. You undertook the housekeeping and you feasted me.”
Alison knew her debt would stand. When her pluck was breaking Kit braced her up. His jokes had banished her dreariness and in his society she had got back hope and calm.
“I wonder whether my train starts from Winnipeg before yours,” she said. “I wouldn’t like to be left at the station——”
“Yours goes first, and I’ll see you on board, but we won’t talk about it yet. Let’s pretend we’re picnicking in the Old Country; for example, at a tarn I know. Imagine the train and the pines have vanished, and red heath and bright green moss roll down to the water. Little Herdwick sheep dot the slopes, and at the top the moor is broken by a dark gash the storms have cut. A beck sparkles in the stones and at the bottom leaps across a ledge——”
“The tarn ripples,” said Alison. “A keen wind blows across the fells, but behind the steep bank, where the mountain ashes grow, the water’s smooth and stained by the peat. In the sun it shines like amber; where the clouds’ shadows fall it’s dark like claret.”
“Do you know the mountain ashes grow up the bank?”