‘A rash promise,’ said Barbara. ‘You are at liberty to recall it. If I were to die, and the pipe were broken, you would be bound to abjure smoking.’
‘If you were to die, dear Miss Jordan, I should bury the pipe in your grave, and something far more precious than that.’
‘What?’
‘Can you ask?’ He looked her in the eyes, and again her colour came, deep as the carnations that had strewed her head.
‘There, there!’ he said, ‘we will not talk of graves, and broken pipes, and buried hearts; we will get the pipe to work at once, if the ladies do not object.’
‘I will run for the tinder-box,’ said Eve eagerly.
‘I have my amadou and steel with me, and tobacco,’ Jasper observed; ‘and mind, Miss Barbara is to consecrate the pipe for ever by drawing out of it the first whiff of smoke.’
Barbara laughed. She would do that. Her heart was wonderfully light, and clear of clouds as that sweet still evening sky.
The pipe was loaded; Eve ran off to the kitchen to fetch a stick out of the fire with glowing end, because, she said, ‘she did not like the smell of the burning amadou.’