she began, in her soft little sympathetic voice, that wasn't much good for anything but just this sort of thing, but could pull the heartstrings out of you at it, and sang it through. She went on after that without being asked, just because she liked it. She knew where the simple chords were in the dark, and she sang everything she wanted to, forgetting finally Francis, and the woods, and everything else in the world except the music and the old things she was singing.
When she had finally done, after an hour or so, and laid the banjo across her lap and leaned back with a little laugh, saying "There! You must be tired by this time!" Francis rose with scarcely a thank-you, and walked out of the door.
"I want a turn in the air before I come to bed," he said.
Marjorie said nothing. She was sleepy, as usual—would she never get over being sleepy up here?—and she laid the instrument on the floor and stretched out thoughtlessly on the window-seat, instead of going off to bed as she had been intending to do. As for her husband, he walked across the veranda straight into a group of his listening men. The music had drawn them over, and, regardless of mosquitoes, they were sitting about on the steps, liking the concert.
"We owe you a vote of thanks for importing that little wife of yours, Ellison," said Pennington, getting up and stretching himself widely in the moonlight. "Maybe if I do some more dishes for her, she'll come and sing for us when she knows it, sometime soon."
Francis had an irrational wish to hit Pennington. But there was no reason why he should. Pennington's particular kind of flippancy was merely a result of his having been, in those far days before he was a remittance man, an Oxford graduate. So was his soft and charmingly inflected voice. But, quite reasonlessly, it was all Francis could do to respond with the politeness which is due to your almost irreplaceable second-in-command on a rush job. His manners once made, he decided that he didn't want the air, after all. He faced about, saying good-night to the risen men, who responded jovially or respectfully, according to their temperaments, and returned to the cabin where he was, for all they knew, living an idyllic life with the wife he adored and who adored him.
He went over, drawn in spite of himself, to the window-seat where Marjorie lay. There was enough moonlight to see her dimly, and he could tell that she had, all in a minute, fallen asleep. She looked very young and tired and childish in the shadows, with her lips just parted, and her hands out and half open at her sides.
"Marjorie! Marjorie, dear!" he said. "Wake up! It's time you were in bed."
He spoke to her affectionately, scarcely knowing that he said it. She was very tired, and she did not wake till he put his hand on her shoulder. Even then she just moved a little, and turned back to her old position.
He finally bent and lifted her to a sitting position, but she only lay against him, heavy still with sleep.