Conversation between us was hardly to be thought of, even if I had not been so drowsily indolent. M’rye was not a talker, and preferred always to sit in silence, listening to others, or, better still, going on at her work with no sounds at all to disturb her thoughts. These long periods of meditation, and the sedate gaze of her black, penetrating eyes, gave me the feeling that she must be much wiser than other women, who could not keep still at all, but gabbled everything the moment it came into their heads.
We had sat thus for a long, long time, until I began to wonder how she could sew in the waning light, when all at once, without lifting her eyes from her work, she spoke to me.
“D’ you know where Ni Hagadorn’s gone to?” she asked me, in a measured, impressive voice.
“He—he—told me he was a-goin’ away,” I made answer, with weak evasiveness.
“But where? Down South?” She looked up, as I hesitated, and flashed that darkling glance of hers at me. “Out with it!” she commanded. “Tell me the truth!”
Thus adjured, I promptly admitted that Ni had said he was going South, and could work his way somehow. “He’s gone, you know,” I added, after a pause, “to try and find—that is, to hunt around after—”
“Yes, I know,” said M’rye, sententiously, and another long silence ensued.
She rose after a time, and went out into the kitchen, returning with the lighted lamp. She set this on the table, putting the shade down on one side so that the light should not hurt my eyes, and resumed her mending. The yellow glow thus falling upon her gave to her dark, severe, high-featured face a duskier effect than ever. It occurred to me that Molly Brant, that mysteriously fascinating and bloody Mohawk queen who left such an awful reddened mark upon the history of her native Valley, must have been like our M’rye. My mind began sleepily to clothe the farmer’s wife in blankets and chains of wampum, with eagles’ feathers in her raven hair, and then to drift vaguely off over the threshold of Indian dreamland, when suddenly, with a start, I became conscious that some unexpected person had entered the room by the veranda-door behind me.
The rush of cold air from without had awakened me and told me of the entrance. A glance at M’rye’s face revealed the rest. She was staring at the newcomer with a dumfounded expression of countenance, her mouth half-open with sheer surprise. Still staring, she rose and tilted the lampshade in yet another direction, so that the light was thrown upon the stranger. At this I turned in my chair to look.
It was Esther Hagadorn who had come in!