Still, youth and comradeship were pleasant. The den in which they sat was warm with light and fire, and was their own. Louie's exultation, too, in their change of fortune, which flashed out of her at every turn, was infectious, and presently his spirits rose with hers, and the two lost themselves in the excitement of large schemes and new horizons.
After a time he found himself comparing notes with her as to that far-off crisis of his running away.
'I suppose you heard somehow about Jim Wigson and me?' he asked her, his pulse quickening after all these years.
She nodded with a little grin. He had already noticed, by the way, that she, while still living among the moors, had almost shaken herself free of the Kinder dialect, whereas it had taken quite a year of Manchester life to rub off his own Doric.
'Well, you didn't imagine'—he went on—'I was going to stop after that? I could put a knife between Jim's ribs now when I think of it!'
And, pushing his book away from him, he sat recalling that long past shame, his face, glowing with vindictive memory, framed in his hands.
'I don't see, though, what you sneaked off for like that after all you'd promised me,' she said with energy.
'No, it was hard on you,' he admitted. 'But I couldn't think of any other way out. I was mad with everybody, and just wanted to cut and run. But before I hit on that notion about Tom'(he had just been explaining to her in detail, not at all to her satisfaction, his device for getting regular news of her)'I used to spend half my time wondering what you'd do. I thought, perhaps, you'd run away too, and that would have been a kettle of fish.'
'I did run away,' she said, her wild eyes sparkling—'twice.'
'Jiminy!' said David with a schoolboy delight, 'let's hear!'