Pen shrugged. "No special hardship in that. I like men just as well as women."
"Nobody but the light-keeper?"
"Oh yes, in bad weather the bug-eyes and the pungy-boats lie under our bank and the skippers come ashore to call on father and use the telephone."
"In winter it must be hard."
"Oh things are never really as bad as they seem to one who doesn't know them."
Just the same his sympathetic voice drew something out of her. For the first time she gave him her eyes freely. Wonderful dark, glowing eyes that won something of him that he never got back again. Her laughing, somber glance said as plainly as if the words had been spoken: "The winter here is Hell!" His eyes laughed back in hers, surrendering, and for an instant they were one.
This brief interchange was terribly sweet to Pen; so sweet that it scared her. For some time afterwards she was quite stiff with him, and his eyes reproached her.
When they left the table and went out on the porch Counsell made a deliberate move to separate her from her prosy father. With all his politeness the young man had a resolute air.
"I think this is simply the finest site for a house that I have ever seen," he said to Pen. "Let's walk out and look over the edge of the bank."
Pen's heart leaped—then sank again, remembering the morning's work still undone, and the afternoon's work all to do. Pendleton looked injured, but as no one paid the slightest attention to him he made believe to recollect something important that he had to do, and went into the house. Pen pleaded with her sterner self: "Just for a few minutes!" Meanwhile she was being firmly urged towards the boxes. Before she was aware of having given in, she found herself well on the way.