"Being tired isn't going to count, is it?" she asked, smiling. "No, I don't mind doing it. It will be like playing with a doll-house. You know, I love this little place."
In her wicked heart she was thinking, "He shall miss me—oh, if I can keep my temper and be perfectly lovely for three months he shall miss me so when I go and get my divorce that he will want to die!" And she looked up at him, one hand on the banjo, as if they were the best friends in the world.
"It isn't time to get supper yet, is it?" she pursued. "You used to like to hear me sing. Don't you want to sit down here by me while I see how the banjo works, just for a little while?"
"No!" said Francis abruptly. "I have to—I have to go and see after a lot more work."
He flung out the door, and it crashed after him. And Marjorie laughed softly and naughtily to herself over the banjo, and pushed the note that had dwelt within farther down inside her dress. "I wish I had the rest!" said she. "Let me see. The kodak was for both of us to go out and take pictures together, of course. The snowshoes—that would have had to wait till winter. The basket and trowel were so we could plant lots of lovely woodsy things we found around the cabin, to see if they would take root. And he must have been going to teach me to fish. I wonder why he wasn't going to teach me to shoot. There must be a rifle somewhere—maybe it hasn't lost its note, if it was hidden hard enough. And he remembered how I liked 'surprises.' He certainly would have made a good lover if I hadn't——"
She did not finish. She got up and hunted for the rifle, which was not to be found. Then she went into the kitchen and hunted for stores, and wondered how on earth a balanced menu could be evolved from cans and dried things exclusively. But the discovery of a cache of canned vegetables helped her out, and as she really was a good cook, and loved cooking, what Francis returned to was not supper, but a very excellent little dinner. And his wife had found time, as well, to dress herself in the most fluffy and useless-looking of rosy summer frocks, with white slippers. She looked more fragile and decorative and childish than he had ever seen her, leaning across the little table talking brightly to him about her adventures in the discovery of the things that made up the meal.
An old quotation about "breaking a butterfly upon a wheel" came to him as she chattered on, telling him delightedly how she had made up her mind to surprise him with tomato bisque if it was her last act, and how she had discovered a box that was labeled "condensed milk," and opened it with infinite pains and a hatchet; and how after she had nearly killed herself struggling with it, she had finally opened it, and found that what it really contained was deviled ham in small, vivid tins; and how she triumphed over Fate by using the ham with other things for hors d'oeuvres; and how she finally found powdered milk in other tins, and achieved her goal after all.
She was exactly as she would have been if all had gone well; and it is not to be supposed that Francis could help feeling it. At first he was quiet, almost gloomy; but presently, as she talked gaily on about all the trifles she could think of—domestic trifles all of them, or things to do with the cabin and its surroundings—he gave himself up to the enjoyment of the hour. It was as if he said to himself, "I'll forget for this little space of time that it isn't real." He looked absorbedly into the little vivid face at the other side of the table, and once, before he thought, put out his hand to take her hand where it lay, little and slim and fragile-looking, on the table. He drew it back quickly, but not before Marjorie had seen the instinctive motion.
She smiled at him brilliantly, and touched him lightly on the shoulder as she passed.
"Come, help me, Francis," she said. "This is our house, you know, and I mustn't do everything alone. And then I must hurry over to the other cabin, and look over my new kingdom, and it would be a shame to do it after your faithful slaves had gone to bed. They would have to get up and dress and stand at attention, wouldn't they, when they heard your august footstep?"