If it seemed pleasantly domestic to him he was wise enough not to say so. He only stated in an unemotional manner that there were eggs put down in water-glass in the entry back; and as this conveyed nothing to Marjorie he went and got some and fried them, and they had supper together.
"You're a bully good cook," he told her, and she smiled happily. Anybody could tell you that much, and it meant nothing. Sometimes dealing with Francis reminded her of a Frank Stockton fairy-tale in her childhood, where some monarch or other went out walking with a Sphinx, and found himself obliged to reply "Give it up!" to every remark of the lady's, in order not to be eaten.
"We won't have time to clear up much," was his next remark, looking pensively at a table from which they had swept everything but one biscuit and a lonely little baked potato which had what Marjorie termed "flaws," and they had had to avoid. "But then, I suppose you might say there wasn't much to clear. We'll stack these dishes and let Pierre or somebody wash 'em. Us for the dance."
They piled the yellow dishes in a gleeful hurry, and Francis went out and disposed of the scraps and did mysterious things to the kerosene stove. They were whizzing back the way they had come before Marjorie had more than caught her breath.
"We'll be a little late, if you have to do anything in the dressing line. I have to shave," said Francis.
Marjorie, who really wasn't used to men, colored a little at this marital remark, and then said that she supposed that it must have been hard not to do it in the trenches.
"Oh, that was only the poilus," said Francis, and went on into a flood of details about keeping the men neat for the sake of their morale. It was interesting; but Marjorie thought afterward that perhaps it was because anything would have been while she was whirring along through the darkening woods in the keen, sharp-scented air. She loved it more and more, the woods and the atmosphere, and the memory of the little cabin. She promised herself that she would try some day to find the place by herself. Maybe she could borrow a horse or a bicycle or some means of locomotion and go seeking it in the forest.
"Now hurry!" admonished Francis as he landed her neatly by the veranda. "Don't let them stop you for anything to eat, as Mother O'Mara will want to."
So she scurried up to her room, not even waiting to hear the voice of temptation, and began hunting her belongings through for something. It was foolish, but she was more excited over the thought of this rough, impromptu backwoods dance than she ever had been in the city by real dances, or out with Cousin Anna at the carefully planned subscription dances where you knew just who was coming and just what they were going to wear.
Finally she gave up her efforts at decision, and went out to find
Peggy. Her room, she knew, was on the third floor.