Reivers turned luxuriously in his bunk and regarded his inquisitor with a smile.
“Poor, dainty, helpless, little lady!” he mocked. “So weak and frail that she needs a protector. Never carries anything more than an eight-inch knife up her sleeve. You do right, MacGregor; your niece certainly needs looking after. She certainly doesn’t know how to take care of herself.
“But about obligations, I don’t quite agree with you. Didn’t you owe me a little something for that turn with the bearded fellow? Not that I did it to save the girl,” he continued loudly, as he heard the door open behind him and knew that Hattie MacGregor had entered. “What was she to me? Nothing! But I was hungry. I needed food. But for that our black-bearded friend might now have been wandering care-free over the snows, a red-haired woman still strapped to his sledge, his taste seeming to run to that colour, which mine does not.”
Hattie MacGregor stilled her uncle’s retort with a shake of her golden-red head, crossed to the fireplace and took up a bowl that was simmering there, and approached the bed. Reivers looked at her closely, striving to catch her eye, but she seated herself beside him without apparently paying the slightest attention. She spoke no word, made no sign to welcome him back from his unconsciousness, but merely held a spoonful of the steaming broth up to his lips.
There was a certain dexterity in her movements which told that she had performed this action many, many times before, and there was nothing in her manner to indicate her sensibility of the change in his condition. Reivers opened his mouth to laugh, and the girl dexterously tilted the contents of the spoon down his throat.
“You fool!” he sputtered, half strangling.
He strove to rise, but her round, warm arm held him down. Over by the fireplace Duncan MacGregor slapped his thigh and chuckled deep down in his hairy throat, but on the face of his niece there was only the determined patience of the nurse dealing with a patient not yet entirely responsible for his behaviour.
She was not surprised at his outbreak, Reivers saw. Apparently she had fed him many times just so—he utterly helpless and childish, she capable and calm. Apparently she was determined to sit there, firm and patient, until he was ready to take his broth quietly and without fuss.
Indignantly he raised his hands to take the bowl from her; then he opened his eyes wide in surprise. He was so weak that he could barely lift his arms, and when she offered him a second spoonful he swallowed it without further demur.
“Ah, well, we’ll soon be able to take the trail again,” drawled MacGregor mockingly. “We’re getting strong now; soon we’ll be able to eat with our own hands.”