“Now,” he continued, “I have a folding drinking-cup and a flask of sherry. It shows how absent-minded I am, for I ought to have thought of the wine long ago. You should have had a glass of sherry the moment we landed here. By the way, I wanted to say, and I say it now in case I shall forget it, that when I ordered you so unceremoniously to go around picking up sticks for the fire, it was not because I needed assistance, but to keep you, if possible, from getting a chill.”
“Very kind of you,” remarked Miss Sommerton.
But the Englishman could not tell whether she meant just what she said or not.
“I wish you would admit that you are hungry. Have you had anything to eat to-day?”
“I had, I am ashamed to confess,” she answered. “I took lunch with me and I ate it coming down in the canoe. That was what troubled me about you. I was afraid you had eaten nothing all day, and I wished to offer you some lunch when we were in the canoe, but scarcely liked to. I thought we would soon reach the settlement. I am very glad you have sandwiches with you.”
“How little you Americans really know of the great British nation, after all. Now, if there is one thing more than another that an Englishman looks after, it is the commissariat.”
After a moment’s silence he said—
“Don’t you think, Miss Sommerton, that notwithstanding any accident or disaster, or misadventure that may have happened, we might get back at least on the old enemy footing again? I would like to apologise”—he paused for a moment, and added, “for the letter I wrote you ever so many years ago.”
“There seem to be too many apologies between us,” she replied. “I shall neither give nor take any more.”
“Well,” he answered, “I think after all that is the best way. You ought to treat me rather kindly though, because you are the cause of my being here.”