"Then you"ll have breakfast with me," she said, quickly.
"Thank you," he smiled, "for taking the hint."
"But won"t your father miss you?" she queried, with mock seriousness.
"He pays no attention whatever to my irregular habits, and I think that"s one reason why we get on so well together. It"s a wise father who knows his own child."
"Especially if it is a wise child," she replied. Her eyes were dancing with mirth, a scarlet signal burned on either cheek, and her parted lips were crimson. She seemed lovelier to him than ever before.
"Honestly, Rose, you seem to get prettier every day."
"Then," she smiled, "if I were younger, I might eventually become dangerous."
"Rose--"
"Old Rose," she interrupted. The high colour faded from her face as she spoke and left her pale.
Allison put his hand on her arm and stopped. "Rose, please don"t. You"re not a day older than I am."
"Ten years," she insisted stubbornly, for women are wont to lean upon the knife that stabs them and she was in a reckless mood. "When you"re forty, I"ll be fifty."
A shadow crossed his face. "It hurts me, someway, to have you talk so. I don"t know how--nor why."
In a single swift surge her colour came back. "All right," she answered, quietly, "hereafter I"m thirty, also. Thanking you for giving me ten more years of life, for I love it so!"
The sun was well up in the heavens when they came to the river, and the dark, rippling surface gave back the light in a thousand little dancing gleams. The ice was broken, the snow was gone, and fragments of shattered crystal went gently toward the open sea, lured by the song of the river underneath.
"It doesn"t look deep," remarked Rose.
"But it is, nevertheless. I nearly drowned myself here when I was a kid, trying to dive to the bottom."
"I"m glad you didn"t succeed. What a heavy blow it would have been to your father!"
"Dear old Dad," said Allison, gently. "I"m all he has."
"And all he wants."
"It"s after eight," Allison complained, looking at his watch, "and I"m starving."
"So am I. Likewise my skirts are wet, so we"d better go."
When they reached Madame Bernard"s, Rose ordered breakfast in the dining-room, for two, then excused herself to put on dry clothing.
Allison waited before the open fire until she came down, fresh and tailor-made, in another gown and a white linen collar.
"I thought women always wore soft, fluffy things in the morning," he observed, as they sat down.
"Some do--the fluffy ones, always."
"Who, for instance, are the fluffy ones?"
"Aunt Francesca for one and Isabel for another."
"How long is the kid going to stay?"
"Until she gets ready to go home, I suppose."
"I thought she had no home."
"She hasn"t. Poor Isabel is a martyr to the Cause of Woman."
"How so?"
"Her mother is Emanc.i.p.ated, with a large E, and has no time for trifles like a daughter. She devotes herself to what she calls the Higher World Service."
"So Isabel is stranded, on a desert island."
"Yes, except for us."
"How good you are!" he exclaimed, with honest admiration.
"It was Aunt Francesca," returned Rose, flushing slightly. "I had nothing to do with it. She took me from a desert island, too."
"Is Isabel emanc.i.p.ated?"
"Not in the sense that her mother is."
"I don"t see but what she is free."
"She is. She can do exactly as she pleases and there is no one to say her nay."
"I thought all women did as they please."
"They do, in the sense that we all do as we please. If you make a sacrifice, you do it because you can get more pleasure out of making it than you would otherwise."
"You"ve been reading Spencer."
"I plead guilty," she laughed.
"If it"s true," he went on, after a moment"s pause, "a genuine New England conscience must be an unholy joy to its proud possessor."
"It"s unholy at all events. One lump, or two?" she asked, as the coffee was brought in.
"Two, please."
It seemed very pleasant to Allison to sit there in the warm, sunny room, with Rose opposite him, pouring his coffee. There was an air of cosiness and domestic peace about it hitherto outside his experience. For the first time he was conscious of the peculiar graciousness and sense of home that only a home-loving woman may give to a house.
"I like this," he said, as he took the steaming cup. "I"d like to do it often."