That was as much as the townspeople ever saw of "Cal Hunter's maiden sister" unless there happened to be a prolonged siege of sickness in the village or a worse accident than usual. Then she came and camped on the scene until the crisis was over, soft-voiced, soft-fingered and serenely sure of herself. Sarah had never married, and even though she had in the long interval which, year by year, had brought to Caleb a more placid rotundity grown slender and slenderer still, and flat-chested and sharp-angled in face and figure, Caleb knew that underneath it all there had been no shrinkage in her soul—knew that there were no bleak expanses in her heart, or edges to her pity.
They often joked each other about their state of single blessedness, did Caleb and his sister. Often, hard upon his easy boast of satisfaction with things as they were, she would quote the fable of the fox and the high-hanging grapes, only to be taunted a moment later with her own celibacy. But the taunt and the fable had long been stingless. For Sarah Hunter knew that one end of Caleb's heavy gold watch chain still carried a bit of a gold coin, worn smooth and thin from years of handling; she knew that the single word across its back, even though it had long ago been effaced so far as other eyes were concerned, was still there for him to see. And Caleb, rummaging one day for some lost article or other, in a pigeonhole in Sarah's desk in which he had no license to look, had come across a picture of a tall and black-haired lad, brave in white trousers and an amazing waistcoat. Caleb remembered having been told that he had died for another with that same smile which the picture had preserved—the tall and jaunty youngster. And so their comprehension was mutual. They understood, did Caleb and his sister.
But sure as he was of Sarah's fundamental kindness, Caleb experienced a twinge of guilty uncertainty that August afternoon as he closed the iron gate behind the grotesque little figure which had already started across his lawn. For the moment he had forgotten that the sun was low in the west; he had overlooked the fact that it was customary for the Hunter establishment to sup early during the warm summer months. But when he turned to find Sarah watching, stiff and uncompromising, from the doorway, he remembered with painful certainty her attitude toward his propensity to pick up any stray that might catch him in a moment of too pronounced mellowness—stray human or feline or lost yellow dog.
Sarah's gaze, however, was not for her brother at that moment. Her eyes were fixed unswervingly upon the figure in the once-white drill trousers and bobbed swallow-tail coat and shuffling boots. She was staring from wide and, Caleb noted, rather horror-stricken eyes at the huge steel trap above the blanket pack. But the boy who must have received her glance full in his face had not faltered a step in his advance. He went forward until he stood at the foot of the low steps which mounted to the veranda; and there he stopped, looking up at her, and removed his battered hat. Caleb ranged awkwardly up alongside him and looked up at her in turn. He, searching desperately for a neat and cleverly casual opening speech, could not know that beneath her forbidding manner a peal of soft laughter was struggling for utterance; could not know that, at that moment, she was telling herself that, of the two, Caleb was far the younger.
At last he cleared his throat, oratorically, and then she promptly interrupted him.
"Supper is served, Cal," she drawled in her gentle, almost lisping voice.
Caleb received the statement as if it were an astounding bit of hitherto undreamed-of news.
"Comin', Sarah!" he chirped briskly. "Comin' this blessed minute!"
And then, with an attempt at disingenuousness:
"I—I've a friend here, Sarah, whom I'd like to—er—present to you! This is my sister, Miss Hunter," he announced to the silent boy, "and this young man, Sarah, this young man is—er—ah—Mr.——"