"I am too busy, Susianne."
"Then I will go alone; I will go for a long, long walk by myself." She gave her foot a defiant stamp upon the floor.
He looked out of his windows north and south; safer district could not be. "I do not think it will rain," he said.
A suspicion of laughter was lurking in his clear quiet eyes, which were framed in heavy brown eyebrows and thick lashes. Nature, who had stinted this man in physical strength, had fitted him out fairly well as to figure and feature.
Susannah, vexed at his indifference, but fearing that he would retract his unexpected permission, was again in the draught of the open door.
"Perhaps I will walk away, away into the woods and never come back; what then?"
"Indians," suggested he, "or starvation, or perhaps wolves, Susianne."
"But I love you for not forbidding me to go, cousin Ephraim."
The smile that repaid him for his indulgence comforted him for an hour; then a storm arose.
In the meantime Susannah had walked far. A squatter's old log-house stood by the green roadside; the wood of the roof and walls was weathered and silver-gray. Before it a clothes-line was stretched, heaved tent-like by a cleft pole, and a few garments were flapping in the wind, chiefly white, but one was vivid pink and one tawny yellow.