Part 31 (1/2)
”Oh, quite well. And free. You know--nothing standoffish, or anything like that. Well, the storm came up again during the night, and we couldn't get home, and it was only a small farm house so some of us had to sleep in the hayloft, and Nellie said she'd be a dead game sport----”
”Now Frank, don't tell me any more. I don't believe it. . . . . . . .
What happened next?”
”Oh, nothing much. It was about noon when we got home, and the old man was pretty sore, but I told him I thought a good deal of Nellie and wouldn't mind marrying her if it came to that, and I asked her to come over here and visit us next summer----”
”You're lying, Frank. Let's go home.”
As we walked home in silence, trailing our sleigh, the nip of the late afternoon stung our cheeks to roses and our breaths trailed behind like the gaseous tail of a very young and leisurely comet. Jean complained that one of her hands was growing cold so I took the mitten off it and drew the hand down into my deep, warm over-coat pocket, where we took all precautions against frost-bite. The other hand had to take a chance.
We walked along the bottom of the gully for shelter from the wind which was rising with sunset. As we neared Twenty-two Jean stopped.
”Frank, I want to ask you a question,” she said. ”There was no truth in that story you told me?”
”You care?”
”Of course I care. Tremendously.”
”Don't you want me to be big?”
”Not that way. I've been talking about intellectual things--spiritual things.”
”I suppose Spoof's bathing suit, with the white and yellow, is quite spiritual?”
”That isn't fair.”
”Oh yes it is. It is merely the other ox getting gored.”
”Anyway, your story wasn't true? You made it up to tease me?”
”If I answer your question will you answer mine?”
”I can't Frank, I can't--not now. I haven't seen Spoof since Christmas.
Perhaps he's sick. Perhaps he's dead. Something awful may have happened.”
”His smoke goes up every morning just the same.”
”Oh, you've been watching it, too. But something has happened. I--I can't answer you now.”
At the door of Jack's house we paused again. We were in the shadow there, and as she turned on the step her form swung close to mine. For a moment I seized her, no longer able to play the semi-Platonic. . . . . .
”But there was no truth in it, was there?” she whispered.
”There was some truth in it,” I confessed, as I turned toward the empty shack on Fourteen.
CHAPTER XXI.
Next morning I was stirring my oatmeal and water when the door opened and in burst Jack. His attire gave evidence of haste; he had thrown a pea-jacket about a somewhat incomplete toilet. I was about to summon up a jocular remark when something in his face silenced me.
”Have you seen Jean?” he demanded.