"Were you afraid to travel alone?"
"Yes; but I brought Pen for company, Paul. You did not see that I brought Pen."
But Pen shied from the outstretched hand, and had recourse to a vial of spirituous-looking liquorice-water.
It was raining now, heavily. By some occult influence, Mrs. Sheppard had caused a table to spring up beside the bed, whereon a cozy round-stomached oil-lamp burned and flared in the wind, in a jolly, drunken fashion, and a coffee-pot sent out mellow whiffs of brown steam.
"It's Mocha, my dear,—not rye. I mean to support my Government, and I'll not shirk the duty when it comes to taxes on coffee. So you were afraid? It's the great glory of our country that a woman can travel unprotected from one end to——Well. But you are young and silly yet."
And she handed Grey a cup with a relaxing mouth, which showed, that, though she were a woman herself, capable of swallowing pills without jelly, she did not hope for as much from weaker human nature.
Paul Blecker had not heard the thunder the first hour Grey was there, nor seen the livid flashes lighting up those savagest heights in the mountains: his eye was fixed on that yellow door yonder in the flickering darkness of the room, and on the possibility that lay beyond it.
Now, while Grey, growing used to her new home, talked to Pen and her hostess, Paul's thoughts came in cheerier and warmer: noting how the rain plashed like a wide sweep of loneliness outside, forcing all brightness and comfort in,—how the red lamp-light glowed, how even the pale faces of the men, in the cold beds yonder, grew less dour and rigid, looking at them; hearing the low chirp of Grey's voice now and then,—her eyes turned always on him, watchful, still. It was like home, that broad, half-burnt arsenal-room. Even the comfortable little black figure, sturdily clicking steel needles through an uncompromising pair of gray socks, fitted well and with meaning into the picture, and burly Pratt Sheppard holding little Pen on his knee, his grizzly black brows knitted. Because Mary, down at home there, was nursing his baby boy now, most likely, just as he held this one. His baby was only a few months old: he had never seen it: perhaps he might never see it.
"She looks like Mary, a bit, mother, eh?"—nodding to Grey, and steadying one foot on the rung of his chair.
Mrs. Sheppard shot a sharp glance.