“Mr. ’Arry, is it possible to reach with safety a station? I mean is time yet to go and return before the snows? Here are no deadly wolves as in my own country––but is much else to make dangerous the way.”
“There must be time or he would not propose it. I don’t know about the snows here.”
“I have seen that Sir Kildene drinks with most pleasure the coffee, but is little left––or not enough for all––to drink it. My mother and I we drink with more pleasure the tea, and of tea we ourselves have a little. It is possible also I make of things more palatable if I have the sugar, but is very little here. I have searched well, the foods placed here. Is it that Sir Kildene has other places where are such articles?”
“All he has is in the bins against the wall yonder.”
“Here is the key he gave me, and I have look well, but is not enough to last but for one through all the months of winter. Ah, poor man! We have come and eat his food like the wolves of the wild country at home, is not? I have make each day of the coffee for him, yes, a good drink, and for you not so good––forgive,––but for me and my mother, only to pretend, that it might last for him. It is right so. We have gone without more than to have no coffee, and this is not privation. To have too much is bad for the soul.”
Amalia’s mother seemed to have withdrawn herself from 217 them and sat gazing into the smoking logs, apparently not hearing their conversation. Harry King for the second time that day looked in Amalia’s eyes. It was a moment of forgetfulness. He had forbidden himself this privilege except when courtesy demanded.
“You forgive––that I put––little coffee in your drink?”
“Forgive? Forgive?”
He murmured questioningly as if he hardly comprehended her meaning, as indeed he did not. His mind was going over the days since first he saw her, toiling to gather enough sagebrush to cook a drop of tea for her father, and striving to conceal from him that she, herself, was taking none, and barely tasting her hard biscuit that there might be enough to keep life in her parents. As she sat before him now, in her worn, mended, dark dress with the wonderful lace at the throat, and her thin hands lying on the crimson-bordered kerchief in her lap,––her fingers playing with the fringe, he still looked in her eyes and murmured, “Forgive?”
“Ah, Mr. ’Arry, your mind is sleeping and has gone to dream. Listen to me. If one goes to the plain, quickly he must go. I make with haste this naming of things to eat. It is sad we must always eat––eat. In heaven maybe is not so.” She wandered a moment about the cabin, then laughed for the second time. “Is no paper on which to write.”