"She's been overdoing it lately, and camp-life, you know,
always means a great excitement to her. It's natural enough, if we take
no notice she'll be all right." He paused to borrow my tobacco pouch and
fill his pipe, and the blundering way he filled it and spilled the
precious weed on the ground visibly belied the calm of his easy
language. "You might take her out for a bit of fishing, Hubbard, like a
good chap; she's hardly up to the long day in the cutter. Show her some
of the other islands in your canoe, perhaps. Eh?"
And by lunch-time the cloud had passed away as suddenly, and as
suspiciously, as it had come.
But in the canoe, on our way home, having till then purposely ignored
the subject uppermost in our minds, she suddenly spoke to me in a way
that again touched the note of sinister alarm--the note that kept on
sounding and sounding until finally John Silence came with his great
vibrating presence and relieved it; yes, and even after he came, too,
for a while.
"I'm ashamed to ask it," she said abruptly, as she steered me home, her
sleeves rolled up, her hair blowing in the wind, "and ashamed of my
silly tears too, because I really can't make out what caused them; but,
Mr.
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