“It’s a right purty an’ a right smart little wife she’ll make fer ye, Dave Titus, an’ she’ll know how to mind yer babies. Ye’re a lucky man, an’ I hope ye understand how lucky ye air!”
Poor Dave! She might as well have thrown a bucket of cold water in his face. For an instant he could have strangled the kindly, coarse-grained, well-meaning, silly woman, who stood beaming her pale goodwill upon them both. He cursed himself for not having warned her that Miranda could not be chaffed like a common Settlement girl. He saw Miranda’s face go scarlet to the ears, though she bent over Jimmy and pretended to have heard nothing; and he knew that in that moment his good work was all undone. For a few seconds he could say nothing, and the silence grew trying. Then he stammered out:—
“I’m afeard ther’s no sich luck fer me, Sary Ann, though God knows I want her. But Mirandy don’t like me very well.”
The woman stared at him incredulously.
“Lord sakes, Dave Titus, then what’s she doin’ here alone with you?” she exclaimed, the weariness coming back into her voice at the last of the phrase. “Oh, you go ’long! You don’t know nothin’ about women!”
This was quite too much for Dave, whose instincts, fined by long months in the companionship of only the great trees, the great winds, and the grave stars, had grown unerringly delicate. His own face flushed up now for Miranda’s sake.
“I’d take it kindly of ye, Sary Ann, if ye’d quit the subject right there,” he said quietly. But there was a firmness in his voice which the woman understood.
“The both of ye must be nigh dead for somethin’ to eat,” she said. “I must git ye supper right off.” And she turned to the fireplace and filled the kettle.
Thereafter, through supper, and through the short evening, Miranda had never a word for Dave. She talked a little, kindly and without showing her resentment, to Mrs. White; but her attentions were entirely absorbed in little Jimmy. Indeed, she had Jimmy very much to herself, for Mrs. White got Dave to help with the chores and the milking. Afterward, about the hearth-fire,—maintained for its cheer and not for warmth,—Mrs. White confined her conversation largely to Dave. She was not angry at him on account of his rebuke—but vaguely aggrieved at Miranda as the cause of it. She began to feel that Miranda was different from other girls, from what she herself had been as a girl. Miranda’s fineness and sensitiveness were something of an offence to her, though she could not define them at all. She characterized them vaguely by the phrase “stuck up”; and became presently inclined to think that a fine fellow like Dave was too good for her. Still, she was a fair-minded woman in her worn, colourless way; and she could not but allow there must be a lot in Miranda if little Jimmy took to her so—“For a child knows a good heart,” she said to herself.
Next morning, soon after dawn, the travellers were off, Miranda tearing herself with difficulty from little Jimmy’s embrace, and leaving him in a desolation of tears. She was quite civil and ordinary with Dave now, so much so that good, obtuse, weary Mrs. White concluded that all was at rights again. But Dave felt the icy difference; and he was too proud, if not for the time too hopeless, to try to thaw it. During all the long, laborious journey upward through the rapids, by poling, he did wonders of skill and strength, but in utter silence. His feats were not lost upon Miranda, but she hardened her heart resolutely; for now a shame, which she had never known before, gave tenacity to her anger. Through it all, however, she couldn’t help thrilling to the strife with the loud rapids, and exulting in the slow, inexorable conquest of them. The return march through the woods was in the main a silent one, as before; but how different a silence! Not electric with meaning, but cold, the silence of a walled chamber. And, as if the spirits of the wood maliciously enjoyed Dave’s discomfiture, they permitted no incident, no diversion. They kept the wood-folk all away, they emptied of all life and significance the forest spaces. And Dave grew sullen.