The mother had left him to make his way to the sun-parlour while she returned to her interrupted labours. She was glad enough to do so. There was never a moment in her simple life that she was completely without hope of this man as a son-in-law.
McLagan had sprawled his great body into a protesting cane-rocker. The table, with its feminine litter intervened between him and the woman who was the most precious thing in all the world to him.
“Seeing there’s two reasons, I guess that’s so,” Claire said slily. Then her smile lit anew. “But I’m real glad you came along now, Ivor. I’d just have hated you going along up to the hills and being away all that time without seeing me first.” Then she laughed outright. “Say, what’ll your tame spook be doing with you away?”
The man shook his head.
“I don’t rightly know,” he said seriously. “Maybe the sea’ll swallow him up. And I’d say it would be good that way.” Then a deep light grew in his eyes. “But it’s real kind of you saying that, Claire. I just had to come along, anyway.”
The girl wanted to ask him why. There was an impulse, a quick, hot impulse to challenge him, and somehow it was an impulse which only a brief while ago would never have been stirring. But she refrained. Instead she turned her eyes to the wide-open windows, and gazed away at the hills of her childhood.
“You see, I’ve got things to tell you—before I go. And they’re important,” McLagan went on quietly.
The girl’s gaze remained upon the hills so full of memory for her. But suddenly her pulses had started to hammer in a fashion so unruly that she was horrified lest the man might be aware of it.
“You mean about that—wreck?”