He had evidently expected her to be angry—could she have been angry so much as all that?—for he looked up with a relieved air.
"I thought you might like to go in there and rest while I went over to where the work is being done," he said matter-of-factly. "I can't get back to you or to the Lodge till just in time for Peggy's dance. But you'll find things in the little cabin to amuse you, perhaps."
"Oh, I don't need things in the cabin to amuse me!" said Marjorie radiantly. "There's enough outside of it to keep me amused for a whole afternoon! But I do want to see in."
He took a key out of his pocket, and together they crossed the clearing to where the little cabin stood, its rustic porch thick with vines. Francis stood very still for a moment before he bent and put the key into the padlock, and Marjorie saw with another tug at her heart that his face was white, and held tense. She felt awed. Had it meant so much to him, then?
She followed him in, subdued and yet somehow excited. He moved from her side with a sort of push, and flung open the little casement windows. The scented gloom, heavy with the aromatic odors of life-everlasting and sweet fern, gave place to the fresh keen wind with new pine-scents in it, and to the dappled sunshine.
"Oh, how lovely!" said Marjorie. "Oh, Francis! Do you know what this place is? It's the place I've always planned I'd make for myself, way off in the woods somewhere, when I had enough money. Only I thought I'd never really see it, you know. . . . And here it is!"
He only said "Is it?" in a sort of suppressed way; but she said no more. She only stood and looked about her.
There was a broad window-seat under the casement windows he had just thrown open. It was cushioned in leaf-brown. A book lay on it, which Marjorie came close to and looked at curiously.
"Oh—my own pet 'Wind in the Willows!'" she said delightedly. "How queer!"
"No, not queer," said Francis quietly, from where he was unlocking an inner door.