She glanced at Hastings as though he were more likely than the others to respond to observations on sea travel. He declared that he always preferred winter crossings; it was the only way to feel the power and majesty of the sea.
"I always feel so," said Lois.
Amzi fidgeted about the room, wishing they would all go.
"Lois," said Mrs. Waterman, gathering herself together, "you will understand, of course, that we don't mean to be unkind, but we feel that we have a right—that it is only proper and just for us to know why you have come back in this way, without giving us any warning, so that we might prepare ourselves—"
Lois's brows lifted slightly; the slim fingers of her right hand clasped the gold band by which the blue enameled watch was attached to her left wrist. She tilted her head to one side, as though mildly curious as to the drift of her sister's remark.
"Oh, you mustn't mind that at all! I should have been sorry if you had gone to any trouble for me. Dropping in this way, what should one expect?" A pretty shrug expressed her feeling that nothing at all had been expected. "Jo, do you remember that time you were running from Captain Joshua Wilson's cow, in his pasture over there beyond the college, and you fell over a fence and cracked a tooth, and how you bawled about it? And I suppose that gold tooth is a memento of the occasion. We used to be the maddest of harum-scarums in those days!"
It was not wholly kind, perhaps, for a woman whose white, even teeth were undisfigured by fillings thus to direct attention to the marks of the dentist's tool in her sister's mouth. And yet Lois had not meant to be unkind; the past as symbolized by Captain Wilson's cow sent her off tangentially into the recent history of Captain Joshua's family, and she demanded information as to the Wilsons' daughter Amanda, who ran away and married an army officer she had met at Columbus, Ohio. As the sisters had never liked Amanda Wilson, they were not pleased to be obliged to confess that the marriage had been a satisfactory one in every particular, and that Amanda's husband was now a colonel. The barometer fell steadily and the gloom of the Arctic night deepened in the faces of the trio.
"Anybody have any more eggnog?" asked Amzi guilelessly.
"I think," said Mrs. Fosdick furiously, "that we've all had enough of that stuff."
This was the least bit pointed, as her husband was at that moment filling a fourth glass for himself.