"I am sorry if I frightened you," she apologized after a little further study of her companion, "but I am so often alone in these woods and now that the war is just over and things so unsettled I thought it best to carry my father's pistol, and you startled me so running toward me."
Ambrose inclined his head, not daring to make any further move, for the girl still held her pistol so confidingly near the neighbourhood of his heart; nevertheless, he was able to see that Miss Dunham had changed since the day of her visit to their shop. Her eyes were bright, but the laughter lines had disappeared from her mouth and chin, and while she still meant to be firm, the man could see that the firmness cost.
Her pistol drooped listlessly downward. "You must not mind; it isn't loaded," she explained, "and even if it were, I couldn't shoot."
But still she handled the weapon in so ingenuous and distinctly feminine a manner that Ambrose reached out. "You wouldn't mind my having a look, Miss Dunham?" Emptying the barrels, a single shot slid into his hand.
"Oh, oh," cried the girl helplessly, "I am so sorry; I might have killed you." Then she wavered for a moment and except for Ambrose's arm might have fallen. The yellow sunlight bathed her and her dress in a golden light. It was a curious thing for the tall man to have a woman's eyes so nearly on a level with his own, though she righted herself almost instantly and taking off her sunbonnet began making odd pats at her hair as girls so frequently do after almost every upsetting situation.
"I didn't faint, I never have fainted in my life," she explained indignantly. "I did feel a little sick, because as I didn't know my pistol was loaded I might so easily have——"
"Just so," Ambrose answered gravely, and then without rhyme or reason both of them laughed, not just for an instant, but for the longest time, as though one of the funniest things in the world had just taken place; and afterward, without asking permission, Ambrose walked back with the girl to the log cabin. He would have gone home immediately, then, but at her door Emily turned to him with hot cheeks like a child longing to make a request and yet afraid.
"Would you mind staying and talking to me for a little?" she begged at length. "You see, it seems to me I haven't laughed for such a long while, and I like to laugh so much."
And Ambrose's face quivered in its old sympathetic fashion. "Course I will," he almost added "honey," but stopped himself in time. "Ef you and I can set a while on this bench by the door I wouldn't be a mite surprised ef we couldn't think up some way to make livin' in 'Pennyrile' a heap more of a laughin' matter for you."