He stared at her open-eyed, and laughed.
“Say, Miss Jenny, you’d better look out. You’ll be speaking American, first thing!”
Thereupon, they fell to chattering like children out of school, each happy to be able to forget for the moment that broken figure up on the cliff top and the haunting fear of what another day might bring to them.
When they had eaten their meal, both with keen appetites, Blake sprang up, with a curt “Good-night!” and swung off down the cleft. The girl looked after him, with a lingering smile.
“I wish he hadn’t rushed off so suddenly,” she murmured. “I was just going to thank him for–for everything!”
The color swept over her face in a deep blush, and she darted around to her tiny hut as though some one might have overheard her whisper.
Yet, after all, she had said nothing; or, at least, she had merely said “everything.”
CHAPTER XXII
UNDERSTANDING AND MISUNDERSTANDING
In the morning she found Blake scraping energetically at the inner surfaces of a pair of raw hyena skins.