Harry King guardedly and tenderly watched over the two women. Every day he carried Amalia out in the sun to a sheltered place, where she might sit and work at the fascinating lace with which her fingers seemed to be only playing, yet which developed into webs of most intricate design, even while her eyes were not fixed upon it, but were glancing about at whatever interested her, or up in his face, as she talked to him impulsively in her fluent, inverted English.
Amalia was not guarded; she was lavish with her interest in all he said, and in her quick, responsive, and poetic play of fancy––ardent and glowing––glad to give out from her soul its best to this man who had befriended her father in their utmost need and who had saved her own and her mother’s life. She knew always when a cloud gathered over his spirit, and made it her duty to dispel such mists of some 268 possible sad memory by turning his thoughts to whatever of beauty she found around them, or in the inspiration of her own rich nature.
To avoid disquieting her by the studied guardedness of his manner, Harry employed himself as much of the time as possible away from the cabin, often in providing game for the winter. Larry Kildene had instructed him how to cure and dry the meat and to store it and also how to care for the skins, but because of the effect of that sight of the bloody sheep’s pelt on Amalia, he never showed her a poor little dead creature, or the skin of one. He brought her mother whatever they required of food, carefully prepared, and that was all.
He constructed a chair for her and threw over it furs from Larry Kildene’s store, making it soft and comfortable thereby. He made also a footstool for the hurt ankle to rest upon, and found a beautiful lynx skin with which to cover her feet. The back of the chair he made high, and hinged it with leather to the seat, arranging it so that by means of pegs it might be raised or lowered. Without lumber, and with the most simple tools, he sawed and hewed the logs, and lacking nails he set it together with pegs, but what matter? It was comfortable, and in the making of it he eased his heart by expressing his love without sorrowful betrayal.
Amalia laughed as she sat in it, one day, close to the open door, because the air was too pinching cold for her to be out. She laughed as she put her hands in the soft fur and drew her fingers through it, and looked up in Harry’s face.
“You are thinking me so foolish, yes, to have about me the skins of poor little killed beasts? Yet I weeped all 269 those tears on your coat because to see the other––yes,––hanging beside the door. It is so we are––is not?”
“I’m glad enough you’re not consistent. It would be a blot on your character.”
“But for why, Mr. ’Arry?”
“Oh, I couldn’t stand it.”
Again she laughed. “How it is very peculiar––that reason you give. Not to stand it! Could you then to sit it?” But Harry only laughed and looked away from her. She laid her face against the soft fur. “Good little animals––to give me your life. But some time you would die––perhaps with sorrow of hunger and age, and the life be for nothing. This is better.”