With all these mingling feelings David was embarrassed. He came toward her slowly, trying to be natural, trying to get back his former way with her. He put out his hand stiffly to shake hands as he had done when he left, and timidly she put hers into it, yet as their fingers closed there leaped from one to the other a thrill of sweetness, that neither guessed the other knew and each put by in memory for closer inspection as to what it could mean. Their hands clung together longer than either had meant, and there was something pleasant to each in the fact that they were together again. David thought it was just because it was home, rest, and peace, and a relief from his anxiety about Marcia now that he saw she was all right. Marcia knew it was better to have David standing there with his strong fingers about her trembling ones, than to have anything else in the world. But she would not have told him so.
"That was a sweet song you were singing," said David. "I hope you were singing it for me, and that it was true! I am glad I am come home, and you must sing it again for me soon."
It was not in the least what he intended to say, and the words tumbled themselves out so tumultuously that he was almost ashamed and wondered if Marcia would think he had lost his mind in New York. Marcia, dear child, treasured them every word and hugged them to her heart, and carried them in her prayers.
They went out together and got dinner as if they had been two children, with a wild excited kind of glee; and they tried to get back their natural ways of doing and saying things, but they could not.
Instead they were forever blundering and halting in what they said; coming face to face and almost running over one another as they tried to help each other; laughing and blushing and blundering again.
When they each tried to reach for the tea kettle to fill the coffee pot and their fingers touched, each drew back and pretended not to notice, but yet had felt the contact sweet.
They were lingering over the dinner when Hannah Heath came to the door. David had been telling of some of his adventures in detail and was enjoying the play of expression on Marcia's face as she listened eagerly to every word. They had pushed their chairs back a little and were sitting there talking,--or rather David was talking, Marcia listening. Hannah stood for one jealous instant and saw it all. This was what she had dreamed for her own long years back, she and David. She had questioned much just what feeling there might be between him and Marcia, and now more than ever she desired to bring him face to face with Kate and read for herself what the truth had been. She hated Marcia for that look of intense delight and sympathy upon her face; hated her that she had the right to sit there and hear what David had to say--some stupid stuff about railroads. She did not see that she herself would have made an ill companion for a man like David.