“Only flashes. Not much. But your father has just been chatting on, and now I have the story without his realizing what news he was telling me.”
I was the first to break another silence:
“I know from what he said how faithful and self-sacrificing—”
“You force me to remind you how much we owe to you, sir. It makes me very uncomfortable. It’s twitting me of a debt which father and I can never pay. Please don’t!”
So there was conversation closed on that point; I did not feel like making Kama Holstrom uncomfortable.
“It’s all coming about just as it should. It will be all right from now on,” she said, after a time.
She had recovered all her usual serenity; she was the girl of the Zizania, cool and distant. I was irritated by her manner. That aloofness was not a square deal between folks who had been through what we had suffered together. It seemed to me that I was not being treated right—first that matter-of-fact manner of Captain Rask and now this coolness on the daughter’s part. Her first greeting had given me an appetite for more of the same sort. Of course, I didn’t expect to be welcomed back from the shadows with a brass band and speeches—but some kind of hankering or dissatisfaction was gnawing inside me and I felt ugly and cross and childish.
“I haven’t intended to go too far in anything, sir. But I have been so anxious to help all I could—forgive me, but father and I do owe you so much! Don’t scowl so! I’ll not mention debts again. I hope you won’t think I was too eager—and that I meddled. But I went to her! I did not want her to misunderstand! It was due you and due myself—and her. So I have explained everything. I have told her the story. It will come about all right—just as you hope—I am sure! I did not intend to stay here—but I have been worrying about—But now you can speak for yourself!”
She rattled it off so fast I couldn’t get in a word. She looked relieved when she had finished—as if she had been carrying around something very disagreeable and had handed it over to somebody for keeps. And I was obliged to wait quite a while before I dared to trust myself to reply to her. What she had handed to me seemed to be about as gratifying as if she had dropped a sea-crab down the back of my neck and then sat back and expected me to give her three cheers.
“Look-a-here!” I yapped. “Where did you get the notion that I wanted you or anybody else to act as my attorney over there?” I jerked my thumb in the direction of the Kingsley house.