As the ducks were young and tender, their cooking took but an hour, or a little more, and the interim was occupied in the countless things that must be done to 104 prepare even a shanty-boat feast. He stirred some cranberry sauce, and she had to baste the ducks, get the flour stirred with water, and condensed cream for gravy, besides setting the table and raising the biscuits, to have them ready for the ducks. She must needs wonder if she’d forgotten the salt, and for ten minutes she was almost in a panic at the thought, while he watched her in breathless wonderment, and took covert glances up the Mississippi River, fearful of, and yet almost wishing to see, that pursuing motorboat come into view.
When at last the smoking viands were on the ample table and they sat with their knees under it, and he began to carve the ducks and dish out the unblessed meal, he glanced up stream through the cabin window on his right. He caught a glimpse of a window pane flashing miles distant in the light of the setting sun—the whiskey boat without doubt. He saw a flock of ducks coming like a great serpent just above the river surface, then a shadow lifted as out of the river, swept up the trees in the lost section of Kentucky opposite, and from spattering gold the scene turned to blue which rapidly became purple, darkening visibly.
Through the open doors and windows swept the chill of twilight, and while she lighted the big lamp he did her bidding and closed the doors and windows. Those shelves of books, classics and famous, time-tried fiction, leered at him from their racks. The gold of titles, the blues and reds and greens of covers fairly mocked him, and he saw himself struggling with the menace of sin; he saw an honourable career and carefully nurtured ambition fading from view, for did not all those master minds warn the young against evil?
But they talked over the ducks of what a pity it was that all towns could not engage themselves in thought 105 the way Athens used to do, and they wondered to each other when the hurrying passion of greed and its varying phenomena would become reconciled to a modest competence and the simplicity which they, for example, were enjoying down the Mississippi.
When he looked up from his meat sometimes he caught her eyes looking at him. He recognized her superiority of experience and position; she made him feel like a boy, but a boy of whom she was really quite fond, or at least in whom she was interested. For that feeling he was grateful, though there was something in her smile which led him to doubt his own success in veiling or hiding the doubts or qualms which had, unbidden, risen in his thoughts at the equivocal nature of their position.
Having dined on the best meal he had had since leaving home, they talked a little while over the remains of the sumptuous repast. But their mood grew silent, and they kept up the conversation with difficulty.
“I think I’d better put up my canvas top,” he blurted out, and she assented.
“And then you must come back and help me wash this awful pile of dishes,” she added.
“Oh, of course!” he exclaimed.
“I’ll help with the canvas,” she said, and he dared not look at her.