“Never better in my life. I’m so sleepy yet. But comfy. I needed a quiet sleep outdoors, and it’s so peaceful here. Breakfast! I roar for breakfast! Where’s the nearest house?”
“Got breakfast all ready.”
“You’re a dear!”
She went to wash in the brook, and came back with eyes dancing and hair trim, and they laughed over breakfast, glancing down the slope of golden hazy fields. Only once did Istra pass out of the land of their intimacy into some hinterland of analysis—when she looked at him as he drank his tea aloud out of the stew-pan, and wondered: “Is this really you here with me? But you aren’t a boulevardier. I must say I don’t understand what you’re doing here at all…. Nor a caveman, either. I don’t understand it…. But you sha’n’t be worried by bad Istra. Let’s see; we went to grammar-school together.”
“Yes, and we were in college. Don’t you remember when I was baseball captain? You don’t? Gee, you got a bad memory!”
At which she smiled properly, and they were away for Suffolk again.
“I suppose now it’ll go and rain,” said Istra, viciously, at dusk. It was the first time she had spoken for a mile. Then, after another quarter-mile: “Please don’t mind my being silent. I’m sort of stiff, and my feet hurt most unromantically. You won’t mind, will you?”
Of course he did mind, and of course he said he didn’t. He artfully skirted the field of conversation by very West Sixteenth Street observations on a town through which they passed, while she merely smiled wearily, and at best remarked “Yes, that’s so,” whether it was so or not.
He was reflecting: “Istra’s terrible tired. I ought to take care of her.” He stopped at the wood-pillared entrance of a temperance inn and commanded: “Come! We’ll have something to eat here.” To the astonishment of both of them, she meekly obeyed with “If you wish.”
It cannot be truthfully said that Mr. Wrenn proved himself a person of savoir faire in choosing a temperance hotel for their dinner. Istra didn’t seem so much to mind the fact that the table-cloth was coarse and the water-glasses thick, and that everywhere the elbow ran into a superfluity of greasy pepper and salt castors. But when she raised her head wearily to peer around the room she started, glared at Mr. Wrenn, and accused: “Are you by any chance aware of the fact that this place is crowded with tourists? There are two family parties from Davenport or Omaha; I know they are!”