“Do you think—you being a woman and acute in such matters—that he’s asked her yet?” he said.
“No, I don’t; they both look too edgy. He’s going to, however, and she’s going to take him, I think. I’m not sure. She may be flirting.”
“If she flirts with Scott, I’ll have her punished,” declared Hard, indignantly.
“Well, maybe she won’t. She’s a bit of a minx, though, and while she’s young she’s no infant. Some girls have to do the world’s flirting, Henry, because the others won’t—or can’t. It wouldn’t do to have things made too easy for you.”
“They are not,” said Hard, with meaning.
“Well, this isn’t getting to Soria’s.” Clara rose hastily. She looked back over the road. “It looks like people back there—dust flying. Do you suppose it’s more troops?”
Hard stared. “No,” he said, finally, “it’s only the wind.”
“Yes, I guess it is,” assented Clara. “Let’s be moving.”
It was slow going—a lame man and a tired woman—both unused to walking even under favorable circumstances. It seemed to Clara Conrad as she looked ahead at the wearisome stretch of road, as though they made no more progress than a couple of ants crawling up a mountainside.
“Do you think we’ll ever make it?” she said, stopping for a long breath at the top of a small rise.