It would have been difficult to associate shadows with Claire’s smiling blue eyes, raised as they were so happily to the rugged face of Ivor McLagan. His embrace showed no signs of yielding. It was an embrace that expressed all the pent feeling of those weeks of absence which haunting memory had so desperately prolonged. Yet only a moment before his coming a deep depression had reigned where now there were only happy smiles. So it had been for much of the time of his absence.
The girl gently withdrew herself from his arms. It was as though the riot of her own feelings was such as to demand restraint. She laughed happily. And she strove to hold a torrent of questions in check.
“Why, Ivor,” she cried almost reproachfully, “I hadn’t a notion you were within miles of the city. When I heard your dear old voice laughing and jollying Mum in the hall-way, I could have shouted for joy. I surely could. When did you get through? When did you get in?”
She moved to a big rocker chair and pulled it forward. She led him towards it and McLagan dropped his big body into it with a content that was shining in every line of his plain face. Then she drew up her own chair near to him.
“Why, last evening.”
“Last evening?”
McLagan nodded, and his smile deepened at the girl’s tone of reproach. He spread out his hands in a gesture that was meant to disarm.
“It had to be that way, kid,” he said. “It just had to be. I could have beat it right along to here. But if I had I’d never have quit to fix all the stuff that helped to bring me along back here to you. Say, I hadn’t a minute till now that I haven’t been on the dead run. And when I’ve told you you’ll be glad. I wasn’t getting around here till I could sit and bask right along in the only smile that makes a feller’s life worth while.”
He eased himself in his chair. Then he reached out and possessed himself of the arm of the girl’s chair. His great hand closed over it, and, with consummate ease, he drew it up to his. They were facing each other, and so close that the polished arms of the chairs touched side by side. He glanced quickly round the sun-parlour. The door into the hall-way had been discreetly closed by the mother, whose fondest hopes had at last been realised. She had beaten a retreat to the domestic quarters which conveniently claimed her.
The place still contrived to trap all the sunlight of the late summer day. The full heat of the season had long since passed. The wide open windows were no longer netted, for the not infrequent night frosts had done much to banish the torment of flies and mosquitoes.