“Now, that shows how foolish one can be,” he said. “I was clean forgetting about the clothes; but we must start again.”
Hetty rose up, and with a little blush held out the cup. “You are wet to the neck, Larry, and it will do you good,” she said. “If you don’t mind—we needn’t wait until Miss Muller gets another cup.”
Larry’s eyes gleamed. “I have run over most of Europe, but they grow no wine there that was half as nice as the tea we made in the black can back there in the bluff. Quite often in those days we hadn’t a cup at all.”
He drank, and forthwith turned his head away, while a quiver seemed to run through him; but when Hetty moved towards him the fräulein laughed.
“It nothing is,” she said. “It is, perhaps, the effect tobacco have, but the mouth is soft in a man.”
Then, as Larry turned towards them she laid her hands on Hetty’s shoulders, and kissed her gravely. “You have trust in him,” she said. “It is of no use afraid to be. I quick take a man like Mr. Grant when he ask me.”
The next moment they were outside, and when he helped her to the saddle, Hetty glanced shyly at her companion. “The fräulein is right,” she said. “But, Larry, will you tell me—where we are going?”
“To Windsor. I have still good friends there. That is the prosaic fact, but there is ever so much behind it. We can’t see the trail just now, dear, but we are riding out into the future that has all kinds of brightness in store.”
A silvery gleam fell on the girl as a billow of cloud rolled slowly from a rift of blue, and she laughed almost exultantly.
“Larry,” she said, “it is coming true. Of course, it’s a portent. There’s the darkness going and the moon shining through. Oh, I have done with misgiving now!”