“Perhaps it would have been too much like housekeeping,” she laughed; “kind of what Mary would call indelicate—”
“Or raw,” Billy interpolated. “She was always springin' that word.”
“And yet look what became of her.”
“That's the way with all of them,” Billy growled somberly. “I've always noticed it's the fastidious, la-de-da ones that turn out the rottenest. They're like some horses I know, a-shyin' at the things they're the least afraid of.”
Saxon was silent, oppressed by a sadness, vague and remote, which the mention of Bert's widow had served to bring on.
“I know something else that happened that day which you'd never guess,” Billy reminisced. “I bet you couldn't.
“I wonder,” Saxon murmured, and guessed it with her eyes.
Billy's eyes answered, and quite spontaneously he reached over, caught her hand, and pressed it caressingly to his cheek.
“It's little, but oh my,” he said, addressing the imprisoned hand. Then he gazed at Saxon, and she warmed with his words. “We're beginnin' courtin' all over again, ain't we?”
Both ate heartily, and Billy was guilty of three cups of coffee.