ADOPTING A FAMILY
As the two men walked down toward the cabin they saw Amalia standing beside the door in the sunlight which now streamed through a rift in the clouds, gazing up at the towering mountain and listening to the falling water. She spied them and came swiftly to them, extending both hands in a sweet, gracious impulsiveness, and began speaking rapidly even before she reached them.
“Ah! So beautiful is your home! It is so much that I would say to you of gratitude in my heart––it is like a river flowing swiftly to tell you––Ah! I cannot say it all––and we come and intrude ourselves upon you thus that you have no place where to go for your own sleeping––Is not? Yes, I know it. So must we think quickly how we may unburden you of us––my mother and myself––only that she yet is sleeping that strange sleep that seems still not like sleep. Let me that I serve you, sir?”
Larry Kildene looked on her glowing, upturned face, gathering his slower wits for some response to her swift speech, while she turned to the younger man, grasping his hands in the same manner and not ceasing the flow of her utterance.
“And you, at such severe labor and great danger, have found this noble man, and have sent him to us––to you do we owe what never can we pay––it is thus while we live 209 must we always thank you in our hearts. And to this place––so won-n-der-ful––Ah! Beautiful like heaven––Is not? Yes, and the sweet sound always in the air––like heaven and the sound of wings––to stop here even for this night is to make those sorrowful thoughts lie still and for a while speak nothing.”
As she turned from one to the other, addressing each in turn, warm lights flashed in her eyes through tears, like stars in a deep pool. Her dark hair rolled back from her smooth oval forehead in heavy coils, and over her head and knotted under her perfect chin, outlining its curve, was a silken peasant handkerchief with a crimson border of the richest hue, while about the neck of her colorless, closely fitted gown was a piece of exquisite hand-wrought lace. She stood before them, a vision from the old world, full of innate ladyhood, simple as a peasant, at once appealing and dominating, impulsive, yet shy. Her beautiful enunciation, her inverted and quaintly turned English, alive with poetry, was typical of her whole personality, a sweet and strange mixture of the high-bred aristocrat and the simple directness and strength of the peasant.
The two men made stumbling and embarrassed replies. That tender and beautiful quality of chivalry toward women, belonging by nature to undefiled manhood, was awakened in them, and as one being, not two, they would have laid their all at her feet. This, indeed, they literally did. The small, one-room cabin, which had so long served for Larry Kildene’s palace, was given over entirely to the two women, and the men made their own abode in the shed where they had slept.
This they accomplished by creating a new room, by 210 extending the roof-covered space Larry had used for his stable and the storing of fodder, far enough along under the great overhanging rock to allow of comfortable bunks, a place to walk about, and a fireplace also. The labor involved in the making of this room was a boon to Harry King.
Upon the old stone boat which Larry had used for a similar purpose he hauled stones gathered from the rock ledge and built therewith a chimney, and with the few tools in the big man’s store he made seats out of hewn logs, and a rude table. This work was left to him by the older man purposely, while he occupied himself with the gathering in of the garden stuff for themselves and for the animals. A matter that troubled his good heart not a little was that of providing for the coming winter enough food supply for his suddenly acquired family. Of grain and fodder he thought he had enough for animals kept in idleness, as he still had stores gathered in previous years for his own horse. But for these women, he must not allow them to suffer the least privation.
It was not the question of food alone that disturbed him. At last he laid his troubles before Harry King.