Then she seated herself at leisure in her Windsor reading-chair, laid her basket of wool-skeins upon the polished book-rest, and calmly fell to knitting.
"So, you are mending fast, sir," says she; and her smooth little fingers travelling steadily with her shining needles, and her dark eyes intent on both.
"Oh, for that," said I, "I am well enough, and shall soon be strong to strap war-belt and sling pack and sack.... Are you in health, Mistress Pen?"
She expressed thanks for the civil inquiry. And knitted on and on. And silence fell between us.
If it was then that I first began to fear I was in love with her, I do not surely remember now. For if such a doubt assailed me, then instantly my mind resented so unwelcome a notion. And not only was there no pleasure in the thought, but it stirred in me a kind of breathless anger which seemed to have long slumbered in its own ashes within me and now gave out a dull heat.
"Have you news of Lady Johnson and of Mistress Swift?" I asked at last.
She lifted her eyes in surprise.
"No, sir. How should news come to us here?"
"I thought there might be channels of communication."
"I know of none, sir. York is far, and the Canadas are farther still. No runners have come to Summer House."