She laughed. "I don"t believe there"s much danger," she said. "I think I shall go on being wicked and mercenary and selfish to the day of my death, and probably getting everything I want."
"I hope not. I mean I hope you won"t get what you want."
"Oh, why are you so unkind?"
"Because I shall want to use you as a terrible example to my grandchildren."
"Do you think you will remember me as long as that?"
"I feel no doubt about it."
She smiled. "It seems rather hard that I have to come to a bad end just to oblige your horrid little grandchildren," she said. "As a matter of fact, I shall probably run them down in my motor as they go to work with their little dinner-pails. And as I take their mangled forms to the hospital, I"ll murmur: "Riatt, Riatt, I think I once knew a half-hearted reformer of that name.""
"You think you, too, will remember as long as that?"
"I have an excellent memory for trifles," she returned, and rose yawning.
"And now I think I"ll go to bed--unless there"s anything more you want to know about our tribal customs. Are you going to write a nature book about us: "Head-hunting Among the Idle Rich"?"
""The Cannibals of the Atlantic Coast" is the t.i.tle," he answered as he gave her a candle. "I"ll leave your breakfast for you in the morning before I go. And by the way, if some one comes to rescue you, don"t go off and leave me in the tool-house, will you?"
"Oh, I"m not really as bad as that."
He shook his head as if he didn"t feel sure.
She went away well satisfied with her evening"s work. There had been something extremely flattering in his mingled horror and amus.e.m.e.nt at her candid revelations. Holding up the candle she looked at her own image in her mirror. "I wonder," she thought, "if that young man knows what a dangerous frame of mind he"s in?"
He had some suspicion, for as he dragged a mattress downstairs and laid it before the kitchen fire, he kept repeating to himself, as if in a last effort to rouse some moral enthusiasm: "What a band of cut-throats they are!"
Christine woke the next morning to find the sun shining on an unbroken sheet of snow. The storm had pa.s.sed in the night. She dressed quickly and went down to find the kitchen empty, and the track of footsteps in the snow leading away in the direction of the tool-house. Her coffee was bubbling and slices of bacon neatly laid in the frying pan were ready for cooking. She thought he might have stayed and cooked it for her.
"No one will come as early as this," she thought, plaintively.
But hardly had she finished her simple meal, when the sound of sleigh bells reached her ears, and running to the window she saw that Ussher and Hickson in a two horse sleigh were driving down the slope.
A moment later they were in the kitchen. And after the minimum time had elapsed during which all three talked at once recounting their own individual anxieties, Ussher asked:
"Where"s Max?"
Christine cast down her eyes with a sort of Paul-and-Virginia expression, as she answered: "Oh, he is sleeping in the tool-house!"
"Well, I call that d.a.m.ned nonsense," said Ussher. "Let a man freeze to death! Upon my word, Christine, I thought you had more sense." And he strode away to the back door. "Yes, here are his tracks, poor fellow."
Ussher went out after him, and Hickson turned back.
"But _you_ think I was right, don"t you, Edward?" said Christine, for she had never failed to elicit commendation from Edward.
But now his brow was dark. "But, I say, Christine," he said, "there"s one thing I don"t understand. These tracks of his footsteps in the snow."
"He didn"t fly, Ned, even if he is an aviator."
"Yes, but it didn"t stop snowing until four o"clock this morning."
How irritating the weather always is, Christine thought. For though she was willing to use scandal as a weapon over Riatt, she was not sure that she wished to put it into Hickson"s hands.
She thought hard, and then said brightly:
"Oh, perhaps he came back for his breakfast before I was up."
Hickson shook his head: "They only lead one way," he said.
In the face of the tactlessness of hard facts, Christine decided to create a diversion.
"I can"t stand here gossiping about the conduct of an aviator," she said, "when there"s so much to be done. Look at all these dirty plates. What ought to be done with them, Edward, dear?" she appealed to him as to a fountain of wisdom, and he did not fail her.
"They ought to be washed," he said. "Give me a towel. I"ll do it." And he felt more than rewarded when, as she handed him a towel, her hand touched his.
The many duties of which she had just spoken seemed suddenly to have melted away, for she sat down quite idly and watched him.
"How well you do it, Edward," she said, not quite honestly, for she compared his slow gestures very unfavorably with Riatt"s deft hands.
"It"s quite as if you had washed dishes all your life."
"Ah, Christine," he answered, looking at her sentimentally over a coffee-cup, "I shouldn"t ask anything better than to wash your dishes for the rest of my life."
"Thank you, Edward, but I think I should ask something a good deal better," she answered.
It was on this scene that Ussher and Riatt entered, and the eyes of the latter twinkled.
"Engaged a kitchen-maid, I see," he said in a low tone to Christine.
"I think it"s so good for people to do something useful now and then, don"t you?"
"A form of education that you offer almost every one who comes near you."
Hickson did not hear everything, but he caught the idea, and said severely:
"I don"t suppose any one would ask Miss Fenimer to wash dirty dishes."
Riatt laughed: "No one who had ever seen her try."
Ussher, who had been fuming in the background, now broke out:
"Upon my word, Christine, that tool-house was like a vault. It was madness to ask any one to spend the night in such a place."
"Did you spend the night in the tool-house?" said Hickson with unusual directness.
"There are worse places than the tool-house," said Riatt, as he and Ussher hurried down to the cellar to put out the furnace fire.
Hickson turned to Christine. "The fellow didn"t answer me," he said.
"Perhaps he thought it was none of your business, Edward, my dear,"