"We happened to find a spruce thick enough to shed the rain," she
smiled. "Or I suppose we'd have been soaked properly."
The young fellow tarried only till she was seated. He had no more than
greeted Carr before he lifted his old felt hat to her.
"I'll be paddling back while the coolness lasts," said he. "Good-by."
"Good-by, Tommy," the girl answered.
"So long," Carr followed suit. "Don't give us the go-by too long."
"Oh, no danger."
He walked to the creek bank, stepped into a red canoe that lay nose on
to the landing, and backed it free with his paddle. Ten strokes of the
blade drove him out of sight around the first brushy bend upstream.
The girl looked thoughtfully after him. Her face was flushed, and her
eyes glowed with some queer repressed feeling. Carr sat gazing silently
at her while she continued to look after the vanished canoe whose
passing left tiny swirls on the dark, sluggish current of Lone Moose.
Presently Carr gave the faintest shrug of his lean shoulders and resumed
the reading of his book.
When he looked up from the page again after a considerable interval the
girl's eyes were fixed intently upon his face, with a queer questioning
expression in them, a mute appeal. He closed his book with a forefinger
inserted to mark the place, and leaned forward a trifle.
"What is it, Sophie?" he asked gently. "Eh?"
The girl, like her father, and for that matter the majority of those
who dwelt in that region, wore moccasins. She sat now, rubbing the damp,
bead-decorated toe of one on top of the other, her hands resting idle in
the lap of her cotton dress. She seemed scarcely to hear, but Carr
waited patiently. She continued to look at him with that peculiar,
puzzled quality in her eyes.
"Tommy Ashe wants me to marry him," she said at last.
The faint flush on her smooth cheeks deepened. The glow in her eyes gave
way altogether to that vaguely troubled expression.
Carr stroked his short beard reflectively.
"Well," he said at length, "seeing that human nature's what it is, I
can't say I'm surprised any more than I would be surprised at the trees
leafing out in spring. And, as it happens, Tommy observed the
conventions of his class in this matter. He asked me about it a few days
ago. I referred him to you. Are you going to?"
"I don't know, Dad," she murmured.