Marcia's laughter, crystalline as a mountain stream, musical as its melody, rippled through the room.
"Official business!" she repeated derisively. "Official business indeed! When, I'd like to know, did Wilton ever have any official business? Don't joke, Elisha. This taking my boat is no joking matter. It is a serious thing to leave me here with no way of getting ashore quickly. I didn't like it at all."
"I'm sorry," apologized the sheriff uncomfortably. "You see, an emergency arose--"
"No emergency is important enough for you to take my boat without asking. Please remember that."
"I will," squeaked the offender, coloring under the reprimand like a chastened schoolboy. "I won't do it again, I promise you."
"All right. You're forgiven this time. Now sit down and tell me the news."
His dignity, his pomposity put to rout Elisha, feeling very small indeed, backed into the nearest chair.
Instead of making the rafters of the Homestead quake at his presence; instead of humbling Heath, reducing Marcia to trembling admiration, here he sat cowed and apologetic.
It was not at all the sort of entrance he had mapped out. It would not do. He had got a wrong start.
Before Eleazer put in an appearance, he must right himself.
With a preliminary ahem, he hitched forward in the rocking chair.
"You won't mind if I go on with my baking, will you?" Marcia said, bustling toward the stove. "I'm makin' dried apple turnovers. They'll be done in a second and you shall have one."
"I thought I smelled pie crust," Elisha murmured vaguely.
Kneeling, Marcia opened the door of the oven.
"Isn't that a sight for sore eyes?" inquired she as she drew out a pan of spicy brown pastries and placed them, hot and fragrant, on the table. "Now, I'll get you a plate, fork and some cheese."
"I don't need no fork," Elisha protested. "I can take it in my fingers."
"Oh, you better not do that. It's sticky and you might get a spot on your Sunday clothes."
"I oughtn't to be eatin', anyhow," he called after Marcia as she retreated into the pantry. "You see, I come here this mornin' to--"
"I guess a nice hot apple turnover won't go amiss no matter what you came for," interrupted the woman, returning with the plate, fork and cheese.