"Three ply will be strong enough?" she asked, straightening up and looking across at him.
"Let me see what three ply feel like," and he went across and watched her while she twisted the threads tightly together with deft soft fingers.
"I should think that would do," he said, running it between his finger and thumb. Their hands met, and the touch of hers sent a quite unexpected thrill of physical delight tingling through his veins. He did not dare to look full at her for the moment, lest she should see it in his eyes. But he was conscious to the point of pain of her close proximity,—somehow conscious too—and that quite unconsciously and without any reasoning on the matter—that, in the twinkling of an eye, she was no longer simply a beautiful and charming girl, but had become for him the most beautiful and charming girl in all the world.
His heart felt suddenly too big for his body. He could have taken her in his arms then and there, and crushed her to him, and smothered her with hot kisses. And he could no more have done it than he could have brained her with his axe. For she trusted him implicitly, and he was himself.
He took a deep breath to give his heart more room, and bent to examine her twist.
"It will do splendidly," he said, and she glanced quickly at him and wondered what had made that curious change in his voice. "How will you keep it rolled tight like that?"
"I've been thinking. If I greased my fingers with some of that pork fat as I roll it, and roll it very tight, it will probably keep so. How long will you want it?"
"As long as you can make it without too much trouble."
"I can make it the full length of that silk as far as I see."
"That will do admirably.... If I can make as good a hook as you have made a line we will have fish for dinner," and he went back to the fire, where, with his axe and his knife and two rusty nails lashed together at the top to act as tweezers, he was endeavouring to bend a portion of her needle into a hook.