IN REAL LIFE TOO
There was no longer any objection raised by Miss Sarah; and Barbara spent every hour of her days with him. It grew warmer with aging spring—and almost immediately he was able to sit with her and watch the stream of logs coming in over the line from Thirty-Mile and beyond.
Miriam and Garry were married in that week which followed directly Steve's first days of convalescence. The former had returned with Garry to the northern valley, and already a note had come from her to the younger girl, in which she bewailed the servant question, as represented by the cook-boy whom her husband had inherited, along with the cabin at headquarters.
Over that particular paragraph Barbara allowed herself to show amusement. She tilted her nose, however, in vast disdain at the tenor of the rest of the letter.
"From the way Miriam raves on and on," she exclaimed, "one would think that Garry had saved the day."
They were at the window together on this occasion, Steve outwardly still a little pale and haggard, but for the rest his old serene self again. He managed not to smile at her small and serious face.
"It certainly has not strengthened my vanity a little bit, either," said he, "to learn how smoothly things can move along without me."
Day by day the girl was finding her way deeper into that innermost heart of him which he had never shared with other woman or man. Hour by hour she was learning to know him better, and yet his whimsical gravity still could deceive her—she was sometimes thoughts behind his thoughts. Hard upon his reply her eyes flashed with indignation.
"Pooh!" she scoffed, "Pooh! Most any old clock will run, after somebody's wound it up!"
It was a trick of speech that she had learned from him, but his employment of parallel, lazily amiable for the most part, had never been so hotly partisan as was hers at that moment. And suddenly self-conscious—suddenly confused and warmly disconcerted at the quality of his gaze—she had to hide her head. But she hid it upon a shoulder most conveniently at hand.