Sheldon had swallowed just before putting the last question. Paula was given the joy of seeing his tanned cheeks pale a little. A look of horror came into his eyes. Then he caught an expression of lively malice in hers, malice and mirth commingled.
“Snakes and lizards,” said Paula. “We catch ’em in holes—”
“You little devil!” muttered the man under his breath. And to show her that he knew now that she was making fun of him, he went back to his stew. “Just the same, Miss Paula,” he told her threateningly, “if we ever do get to the outside I’ll take you to dinner some time, and I’ll order oysters and shrimps for you. And crab and lobster, by glory! I wonder what you’ll say at that?”
Paula didn’t know, didn’t have any opinion on the subject.
“They are fishes,” she hazarded the opinion with an uncertain show at certainty. “We eat fishes, too.”
He ate his scanty meal, insisting upon her coming to sit across the table from him. She watched him, but refused to eat. Plainly she was still deeply distressed. Her eyes were never still, going from him to the door, to the rifle on the floor by him, to the door again. But she made no further attempt at escape.
Meanwhile he took this opportunity to examine the cabin more carefully than he had done so far. A broken bottle stood in a corner, serving as a vase for a handful of field flowers. Upon the walls were a number of pictures gleaned years ago from newspapers—one a view of the business section of a city, one a seascape, one a lady in a ball dress of about 1860 or 1870, one a couple of kittens.
Upon the wall on Paula’s side of the partition was a bulge, which was evidently the young woman’s wardrobe, covered over with a blanket hung from pegs. An ax with a crude handle lay on the floor. A long, heavy box served both as receptacle for odds and ends, and, covered with a plank, as a bench.
“Now,” said Sheldon, “shall we go and find your father?”
Paula did not hesitate, nor did she again seek to dissuade him from his purpose.