And what do you think? There was a shaft of silvery smoke arising from that chimney, too, and it was shot through with little sparks like stars, as if the fire it came from had been newly lighted.
“Oh,” I cried, “the owner of the house has come!”
I had been so happy all day that I forgot to be disagreeable, and though I had quite made up my mind to dislike this person intensely, I neglected to do it at that moment, for thinking of how happy he must be to have come to his beautiful little house. I wondered too if his wife was with him, and what she was like. Then I remembered that I had heard he was not married, and I thought:
“He can never be lonely amid such beauty. To look off on a scene like this will be company enough.”
[Picture: It was Keefe O’Connor who stood there holding out his hands to me]
But I knew that wasn’t really so. No beauty, however great, can comfort one for a lonely hearth; no meal is delicious for which only one place is set.
Then, out of that purplish gloom and from the shadow of the porch at the side of the house I heard a voice saying lazily:
“Won’t you be pleased to ’light and come in?”
It had the mountain drawl and the mountain way, but there was something wrong with it, and it made me look inquiringly at Jim. He was wearing a broad grin—a perfectly wonderful, old-time-Jim grin.
Curiosity got hold of me and flung me off that horse and sent me right up to the stranger on the porch.
“It is very kind of you,” I said in a fine Mallowbanks manner, “and we shall be delighted. We have so long been interested in the building of this beautiful little house, and we did not know its owner—”
It was Keefe O’Connor who stood there holding out his hands to me.
“I’ll put up the horses, sis,” said Jim with a little funny break in his voice. And then Keefe drew me into the lighted room.
You two have been such true lovers for so many years, that I need tell you nothing about what that moment meant. No, I need not tell you anything at all.
After a while we went into the long room where the fire was leaping.
“It is bare,” said Keefe. “But I left the furnishings to you.”
I said nothing. I laughed. It was different from any other laugh I ever had. I laughed and laughed.
“What is so amusing?” asked Keefe at last.