Leger smiled. "I wonder," he said, "whether that has just dawned on you. Still, I'm not so strong as you are—and there's Hetty. You'll have to go alone, but you'll leave at least two people behind you who will think of you often."
He stopped abruptly, for there was a patter of feet on the stairway, and Ingleby rose as the door swung open and a girl came in. She carried a basket, and appeared a trifle breathless, for the stairs were steep, but her dress was tasteful, and most men would have admitted that she was pretty. She took the chair Ingleby drew out, and smiled at him.
"Do you know that the people downstairs would hardly let me in?" she said. "You seem to be very well looked after, but I knew you wouldn't mind me. I've come for Tom."
Ingleby laughed, but it was a trifle uneasily, for he was young, and by no means the girl's equal in the matter of self-possession. In fact, one had only to look at Hetty Leger to recognize that she was capable, and could be, on occasion, a trifle daring, for there was courage as well as cheerfulness in her clear blue eyes, which met one's glance steadily from under dark and unusually straight brows.
"You have been marketing?" he said.
Hetty nodded. "Yes," she answered. "You can, if you know how to go about it, get provisions cheap after ten o'clock on Saturday night, and I have had the usual difficulty in making ends meet this week. Wouldn't it be a relief to live in a country where there was no rent to pay and you take a spade and grow what you want to eat?"
"Ingleby's going where they do something of that kind, though I believe they now and then dig up gold and silver, too," said her brother.
Hetty, for no ostensible reason, pulled up one of her little cotton gloves, which did not seem to need it, and then looked quietly at Ingleby.
"Then you are going away?" she asked.
Her brother nodded. "Yes," he said. "To the Pacific slope of North America. He was just suggesting that we should come, too."