She stood a little awkwardly, seeming not to see his hand. He only smiled, and leaned his tall figure in the fawn-colored clothes against the pillar.
"Tell me, America, do you have much weather as fine as this?"
"We have Indian summer in this country, if that's what you mean."
He looked so well against the pillar. Val longed to take up some nonchalant attitude by the one nearest her, but she remembered it was black with the all-pervading coal-dust, and forbore being picturesque at the price.
"Of course," Ethan assented. "I'd forgotten you had a fifth season in your calendar. Naturally, the old regulation four wouldn't content you."
"I can't think why you talk as if you weren't an American yourself. You might be some poor foreigner--"
"That's the worst of living abroad a lot," he said: "you are always a foreigner there. But it's only when you come home, and find that you are more of a foreigner than ever, that you begin to mind."
("Horrid, sneering French ways," she commented to herself, not really thinking so, but feeling it a duty and a kind of instinctive defence to pretend she did. Something rueful in his laugh was not lost upon her.)
"Still, I do appreciate your Indian summer," he added.
"I should think so." She threw back her head and drew in the sweet, sun-laden air. "It's the very best time of all the year." He didn't answer. "Don't you think so?"
"I think it a little melancholy, for all it's so beautiful."
"How curious! It's the time that makes me happiest."
"Perhaps you prefer spring?" She spoke as one condescending to childishness. "A good many people seem to."
No trays went up-stairs that morning. Everybody appeared, and the two girls couldn't remember when so gay a party had assembled in the dingy dining-room. But the pleasantry was of that strictly family character whose special savor is withheld from the outsider.
As Ethan was taking his place by Mrs. Gano, he stopped suddenly, catching sight of the preternaturally tall silver coffee-pot, and made obeisance.
"Sir or madam," he said, "I've travelled far since we parted, but I've never seen your equal."
"That means the Mioto air has made you readier for your morning cup than you've been since you were here before. Or perhaps you agree with Frederika Bremer's old woman, 'When I see a coffee-pot, it's the same to me as if I saw an angel from heaven.'"