Coming back she said, with a brisk attempt to reassert a nurse's authority: "You may go out and sit in the sun for an hour."
It only made him smile now—covering her with confusion again. "Yes, ma'am," he said with mock humility. "If you'll come, too."
"I have my work to do," said Kitty rebukingly.
He was incorrigible. "Please, I can't walk all that way without help," he said plaintively.
She laughed, and helped him outside; lingered beside the bench—and finally sat down on the other end of it. Poor, inexperienced Kitty had no armour for her soft breast. They chattered and laughed, and the hours flew on wings. Ralph told her no more of his story than his name and profession. She, seeing that it distressed him to rake up the past, was happy to avoid it. For the same reason she forbore saying anything as yet about the wonderful story he had told in his delirium. She, likewise in private, made her father agree not to ask their visitor any questions until he was stronger.
Ralph's frame of mind was natural to one recovering from a sudden, serious illness. He instinctively felt the necessity of maintaining a quiet mind while the strength stole deliciously back through his veins. Away back he apprehended a burden waiting to be shouldered when he was strong enough, but at present he would have none of it. He was no more than a bit of reanimated clay gratefully absorbing the sunshine. At no time was vanity a great factor in his make-up, and in his present purgated state it was non-existent. It honestly never occurred to him that their jolly talk and laughter, and the exchange of happy glances might be working irremediable damage in the breast of the dreamy girl beside him.
Ralph, now sufficiently recovered, was banished to the men's bunks, outside, and Kitty repossessed herself of her own room. That night in the secure and comfortable darkness her defences fell away from her. She pressed her lips to the pillow that had supported his dear head throughout his illness, and moistened it with her tears. "Little did I guess when he came tumbling through the doorway," she thought—and left the thought unfinished on a swelling breast. "It is like an answer to a prayer I didn't dare make," she whispered to herself. When doubts and jealousies of the mystery that enshrouded him obtruded on her, she thrust them away. "It must be all right!" she insisted. "His feet were led to our door!"
The next day passed in the same fashion. Ralph insisted on helping Kitty with the housework, much to her amused scorn. Ralph took an inexhaustible delight in her naïve simplicity. She loved to have him chaff her. He seemed to her the cleverest, kindest, most lovable of superior creatures. Further than that the mystery of his manliness thrilled her. In his eyes there lurked a strange, sly promise of rapture. She called it "wickedness" in her innocence and was sweetly troubled. "What shall I do if he tries to kiss me?" she thought in a delicious panic. As the day passed and he made no move to do so a faint chagrin made itself felt, which she refused to recognize.
As if moved by a common impulse they kept their conversational shallop floating in the safe shallows. Reminiscences of childhood afforded them much humorous matter. Ralph did most of the talking.
"Once when I was a kid," he said, "they dug up the street in front of our house for a drain, and ran into an Indian burial ground. My chum and I played ninepins on the sidewalk with the skulls, and the constable arrested us. What a fuss there was!"