"Did you say up?" The professor's voice held incredulity. Whereupon his hostess had most unkindly smiled: "You're not much of a walker, are you?" was her untactful comment.
"My leg—" He had actually begun to tell her about his leg! Luckily her amused shrug had acted as a period. He felt very glad of this now. To have admitted weakness would have been weak indeed. For the girl was so splendidly strong! Only a child, of course, but so finely moulded, so superbly strung—light and lithe. How she had swung up the trail, a heavy packet in either hand, with scarcely a quickened breath to tell of the effort! Her face?—he tried to recall her face but found it provokingly elusive. It was a young face, but not youthful. The distinction seemed strained and yet it was a real distinction. The eyes were grey, he thought. The eyebrows very fine, dark and slanted slightly, as if left that way by some unanswered question. The nose was straight, delightful in profile. The mouth too firm for a face so young, the chin too square—perhaps. But even as he catalogued the features the face escaped him. He had a changing impression, only, of a graceful contour, warm and white, dark careless eyes, and hair—quantities of hair lying close and smooth in undulated waves—its color like nothing so much as the brown of a crisping autumn leaf. He remembered, though, that she was poorly dressed—and utterly unconscious, or careless, of being so. And she had been amused, undoubtedly amused, at his annoyance. A most unfeminine girl! And that at least was fortunate—for he was very, very weary of everything feminine!
CHAPTER III
Yawningly, the professor reached for his watch.
It had run down.
"Evidently they do not wake guests for breakfast," he mused. "Perhaps," with rising dismay, "there isn't any breakfast to wake them for!"
He felt suddenly ravenous and hurried into his clothes. It is really wonderful how all kinds of problems give place to the need for a wash and breakfast. Somewhere outside he could hear water running, so with a towel over his arm and a piece of soap in his pocket he started out to find it. His room, as he had noted the night before, was one of two small rooms under the eaves. There was a small, dark landing between them and a steep, ladderlike stair led directly down into the living-room. There was no one there; neither was there anyone in the small kitchen at the back. Benis Spence decided that this second room was a kitchen because it contained a cooking stove. Otherwise he would not have recognized it, Aunt Caroline's idea of a kitchen being quite otherwise. Someone had been having breakfast on a corner of the table and a fire crackled in the stove. Window and door were open, and leafy, ferny odors mingled with the smell of burning cedar. The combined scent was very pleasant, but the professor could have wished that the bouquet of coffee and fried bacon had been included. He was quite painfully hungry.
Through the open door the voice of falling water still called to him but of other and more human voices there were none. Well, he could at least wash. With a shrug he turned away from the half cleared table and, in the doorway, almost ran into the arms of a little, old man in a frock coat and a large umbrella. There were other items of attire, but they did not seem to matter.
"My dear sir," said the little, old man, in a gentle, gurgling voice. "Let me make you welcome—very, very welcome!"