Читать книгу The Prairie Mother - Stringer Arthur - Страница 6

I was dreadfully afraid he was going to laugh at me, it sounded so much like pulpiteering. But I was in earnest, passionately in earnest, and my lord and master seemed to realize it.

“Have you thought about the kiddies?” he asked me, for the second time.

“I’m always thinking about the kiddies,” I told him, a trifle puzzled by the wince which so simple a statement could bring to his face. His wondering eye, staring through the open French doors of the living-room, rested on my baby grand.

“How about that?” he demanded, with a grim head-nod toward the piano.

“That may help to amuse Lady Alicia,” I just as grimly retorted.

He stared about that comfortable home which we had builded up out of our toil, stared about at it as I’ve seen emigrants stare back at the receding shores of the land they loved. Then he sat studying my face.

“How long is it since you’ve seen the inside of the Harris shack?” he suddenly asked me.

“Last Friday when I took the bacon and oatmeal over to Soapy and Francois and Whinstane Sandy,” I told him.

“And what did you think of that shack?”

“It impressed me as being sadly in need of soap and water,” I calmly admitted. “It’s like any other shack where two or three men have been batching—no better and no worse than the wickiup I came to here on my honeymoon.”

Dinky-Dunk looked about at me quickly, as though in search of some touch of malice in that statement. He seemed bewildered, in fact, to find that I was able to smile at him.

“But that, Chaddie, was nearly four long years ago,” he reminded me, with a morose and meditative clouding of the brow. And I knew exactly what he was thinking about.

“I’ll know better how to go about it this time,” I announced with my stubbornest Doctor Pangless grin.

“But there are two things you haven’t taken into consideration,” Dinky-Dunk reminded me.

“What are they?” I demanded.

“One is the matter of ready money.”

“I’ve that six hundred dollars from my Chilean nitrate shares,” I proudly announced. “And Uncle Carlton said that if the Company ever gets reorganized it ought to be a paying concern.”

Dinky-Dunk, however, didn’t seem greatly impressed with either the parade of my secret nest-egg or the promise of my solitary plunge into finance. “What’s the other?” I asked as he still sat frowning over his empty pipe.

“The other is Lady Alicia herself,” he finally explained.

“What can she do?”

“She may cause complications.”

“What kind of complications?”

“I can’t tell until I’ve seen her,” was Dinky-Dunk’s none too definite reply.

“Then we needn’t cross that bridge until we come to it,” I announced as I sat watching Dinky-Dunk pack the bowl of his pipe and strike a match. It seemed a trivial enough movement. Yet it was monumental in its homeliness. It was poignant with a power to transport me back to earlier and happier days, to the days when one never thought of feathering the nest of existence with the illusions of old age. A vague loneliness ate at my heart, the same as a rat eats at a cellar beam.

I crossed over to my husband’s side and stood with one hand on his shoulder as he sat there smoking. I waited for him to reach out for my other hand. But the burden of his troubles seemed too heavy to let him remember. He smoked morosely on. He sat in a sort of self-immuring torpor, staring out over what he still regarded as the wreck of his career. So I stooped down and helped myself to a very smoky kiss before I went off up-stairs to bed. For the children, I knew, would have me awake early enough—and nursing mothers needs must sleep!