CHAPTER X
BERNARD PONDERS
It was getting dark in the hall at Langrigg and Jim, who had just returned from the marsh, sat in the hollow of the big fireplace. Rain beat upon the windows, outside which the trees tossed their naked branches against the lowering sky, and a cold wind wailed about the ancient walls. Oak logs snapped in the grate and Carrie sat on the rug in the flickering light. She was toasting muffins, and a silver teapot and some cups stood on the low table in front of Mrs. Winter. Now the days were getting cold and short, tea by the hearth was a popular function. Carrie buttered a muffin and gave it Jim on the end of the fork.
"Jake must wait for the next. I can't toast the things fast enough for him," she said. "They're quite nice if you eat them hot, but they're not like the flapjacks I made in the woods. After all, we had some pretty good times on the new line; hadn't we, Jim? Mother doesn't know; she wasn't there."
"I was not," said Mrs. Winter. "If you had taken me along, I wouldn't be with you now. A roof that keeps out the rain, a warm room, and a comfortable chair are good enough for me."
"You'd have said for mine, not long since. Looks as if we were all getting English," Carrie replied. "Jim was very nice when he got you the chair. It's up against all the other things. If I was Jim, I'd hate to have it around."
Jim laughed. He had sent to London for the American spring rocking-chair that clashed with the old oak in the hall, but it was a pattern Mrs. Winter liked and he was satisfied. He ate his muffin silently, for he was tired, and Carrie's remarks had wakened memories of other fires that burned among the tall straight trunks in the Canadian wilds; he thought he could hear the snow-fed river brawl, and smell the smoke that drifted in blue wreaths about the lonely camp. Carrie had laughed and bantered him then and he had been happy. He was happy now and hoped to be happier yet, but Carrie was often quiet and he had a puzzling feeling that he had lost something he could not recapture.
Presently she picked up a local newspaper and lighted a candle with a shade. The light only spread a yard or two, but it touched the page she folded back and sparkled in her hair.
"They have got a master for the otter-hounds!" she exclaimed, and then her color rose and her eyes went hard. "I don't know the committee, but if the others are like Hodson, they're solemn old fools."
"I'd rather have liked the post, but it doesn't matter much," said Jim, and added, with a smile: "Now you're like the Carrie who went North with us."