"Don't you believe it," he whispered back. "When a woman reads you the Riot Act go out and have a riot. Nothing makes her so unhappy as to suspect that her husband is having a good time when she thinks he should be doing penance over her displeasure."
I had no opportunity to mention that I wasn't Jean's husband, and that the furthest thing from my wish was to make her unhappy, and that I wondered where Jack got all his information, for Lucy Burke was plying us with fried pork and baked beans and browned potatoes and home-made bread and butter and coffee that would float an egg. After dinner Burke, with the loneliness of a homesteader to whom the visit of a neighbour is something of an event, detained us as long as possible, on one pretext or another, and finally, when we insisted upon going, hitched up the mules and drove us back to Fourteen.
It was dark by this time and the lamps were lighted. I noticed that lamps were set so that their yellow wedges of light thrust out into the darkness from each of our windows. Jean was at the door with the sound of our sleigh bells, and as I passed close by her I scrutinized her face for some hopeful sign. It was a blank wall.
We made Spoof and Burke stay for supper, and no one had more fun over the day's events than had Spoof. Jean kept her indignation well bridled, and we were a happy party, outwardly, at any rate. Spoof and Burke made it up that they would drive to Jake's late that night, when he would be sure to be in bed, and stuff his stove-pipe with a sack as a slight exchange of compliments. During the evening Jean's eyes avoided mine but I had an uncomfortable feeling that three of us were on a precipice which afforded room for only two, and that I was the third.
As the evening wore on Spoof insisted that Jean get out the banjo. I could see that she was in no mood for music, but she played her part well, and as their voices joined in "Old Black Joe" and "Silver Threads Among the Gold" I could not help wondering if she were as unhappy as I was.
After they had sung for a while Spoof took the banjo from Jean and swept his lean, long hand with quick, delicate master-strokes across its strings. Under his spell our little homestead shack faded out in the blur of Spoof's tobacco smoke, and presently I saw a little boy and girl sitting on the bank of a river, digging their toes in the warm sand and watching the spray of misty diamonds from the water-wheel across the stream.
"Spooky old machine, a banjo, isn't it?" I heard Spoof say at length, and of a sudden I was back on Fourteen, and in the midst of a world which had its share of troubles. "Has an uncanny way of ripping up the past; tombstones, skeletons, everything." Then, to an improvised accompaniment, he began reciting Kipling's poem to the banjo.
"It was this poem," he explained, in the midst of his recital, "that caused me to bring a banjo to Canada. Otherwise I should probably have shipped a piano, to the enrichment of the transportation people and my own further financial undoing. I must drop R. K. a line of appreciation."
"Still, the piano case would have come handy," Jack suggested. "You might have put your house in it in bad weather."
"Almost," said Spoof. But he was back to his theme again, and the wooden wall against which I leaned trembled in sympathy with his strings.