He slipped off and held the machine for her to get out.

"Oh," said Marjorie, "it's like something out of a fairy-book!"

CHAPTER VI

They had gone through what seemed to Marjorie's city-bred eyes a dense forest, but which Francis had a.s.sured her was only a belt of woodland--quite negligible. And they had come out, now, on what Francis called a clearing. It was thick with underbrush, little trees, and saplings; while bloodroot flowered everywhere, and the gleam of thickly scattered red berries showed even as they rode quickly over the gra.s.s. In the center of things were the two cabins Francis had spoken of; one quite large--Francis seemed given to understatement--and the other of the conventional cabin size.

"The larger one is where my men stay," he explained. "Two of them are there now. That's why you see a red shirt through the window. Pierre is probably leaving it there to dry. I'll take you through if you like, but it's just a rough sort of place. The lean-to is the cook-place. All that cabin has inside is bunks, and a table or two to play cards on, as far as I remember. The other cabin----"

He stopped short, and turned away, pretending to fuss over his motor-cycle, which he had already laid down tenderly in just the right spot and the right position. Marjorie, eager and swift, sprang close to him like a squirrel. She did not look unlike one for the moment, wrapped in the thick brown coat with its furry collar.

"The other one! Oh, show me that, and tell me all about it!" she demanded ardently.

"The other one----" he said. "Well--it's nothing. That's where I wanted to bring you to stay--before I knew there wasn't anything to it but--this. I--fixed it up for--us."

In spite of all the things she had against Francis, Marjorie felt for the moment as if there was something hurting her throat. She was sorry for him, not in a general, pitying way, but the close way that hurts; as if he was her little boy, and something had hurt him, and she couldn't do anything about it.

"I'm--I'm sorry," she faltered, not looking at him.

He had evidently expected her to be angry--could she have been angry so much as all that?--for he looked up with a relieved air.

"I thought you might like to go in there and rest while I went over to where the work is being done," he said matter-of-factly. "I can't get back to you or to the Lodge till just in time for Peggy's dance. But you'll find things in the little cabin to amuse you, perhaps."

"Oh, I don't need things in the cabin to amuse me!" said Marjorie radiantly. "There's enough outside of it to keep me amused for a whole afternoon! But I do want to see in."

He took a key out of his pocket, and together they crossed the clearing to where the little cabin stood, its rustic porch thick with vines.

Francis stood very still for a moment before he bent and put the key into the padlock, and Marjorie saw with another tug at her heart that his face was white, and held tense. She felt awed. Had it meant so much to him, then?

She followed him in, subdued and yet somehow excited. He moved from her side with a sort of push, and flung open the little cas.e.m.e.nt windows. The scented gloom, heavy with the aromatic odors of life-everlasting and sweet fern, gave place to the fresh keen wind with new pine-scents in it, and to the dappled sunshine.

"Oh, how _lovely_!" said Marjorie. "Oh, Francis! Do you know what this place is? It's the place I've always planned I'd make for myself, way off in the woods somewhere, when I had enough money. Only I thought I'd never really see it, you know. . . . And here it is!"

He only said "Is it?" in a sort of suppressed way; but she said no more. She only stood and looked about her.

There was a broad window-seat under the cas.e.m.e.nt windows he had just thrown open. It was cushioned in leaf-brown. A book lay on it, which Marjorie came close to and looked at curiously.

"Oh--my own pet 'Wind in the Willows!'" she said delightedly. "How queer!"

"No, not queer," said Francis quietly, from where he was unlocking an inner door.

So Marjorie said no more. She laid the book down a little shyly and investigated further. The walls were of stained wood, but apparently there were two thicknesses, with something between to keep the heat and cold out, for she could see a depth of some inches at the door. There was a perfectly useless and adorable and absurd balcony over the entrance, and a sort of mezzanine and a stair by which you could get to it; something like what a child would plan in its ideas of the kind of house it wanted. There was a door at the farther end leading into another room, and crossing the wooden floor, with its brown fiber rug, Marjorie opened it and entered a little back part where were packed away most surprisingly a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom.

"Why, it isn't a cabin--it's a bungalow!" she said, surprised. "And what darling furniture!"

The furniture was all in keeping, perfectly simple and straight-built, of brown-stained wood. There was a long chair at one side of the window-seat, with a stool beside it, and a magazine thrown down on the stool. Everything looked as if it had just been lived in, and by some one very much like Marjorie.

"When did you do all this?" she asked curiously.

"I didn't know you'd had any time for ages and ages. Was it----"

"Was it for some other girl," was hovering on her lips. But she did not ask the question. As a matter of fact, she didn't want to hear the answer if it was affirmative. "You don't remember," he said quietly.

"I put in some time training recruits not far from here. No, of course you don't remember, because I never told you. It was in between my first seeing you, and the other time when I was going around with you and Billy and Lucille. After I saw you that first time, when I had to come back here, near as it was to my old haunts,--well, I didn't know, of course, whether I was ever going to marry you or not. But--there was the cabin, my property, and I had time off occasionally and nothing to do with it. So--well, it was for the you I thought might possibly be. It made you realer, don't you see?"

Marjorie sank down as he finished, on the broad, soft window-seat; and began to cry uncontrollably.

"Oh--oh--it seems so pitiful!" he made out that she was saying finally.

"I--I'm so sorry!"

Francis laughed gallantly.

"Oh, you needn't be sorry!" he said, smiling at her, though with an obvious effort. "I had a mighty good time doing it, my dear. Why, the things you said, and the way you acted while I was doing it for you--you've no idea how nice they were. You sat just----"

"Oh, that was why the book was on the window-seat, and the other things----"

"That was why," nodded Francis.

"And the stool close up to the lounge-chair----"

He nodded.

"You lay there and I sat by you on the stool," he said. "And you whispered the most wonderful things to me----"

"I didn't!" said Marjorie, flushing suddenly. "You know perfectly well all the time that was going on I--the real Me--was being a filing-clerk in New York, and running around with Lucille, and being bored with fussy people in the office, and hunting up letters for employers and hoping they wouldn't discover how much longer it took me to find them than it did really intelligent people----"

"No," said Francis, suddenly dejected, "you didn't. But--it was a nice dream. And I think, considering all that's come and gone, you needn't begrudge it to me."

"I don't," said Marjorie embarra.s.sedly. "I--I only wish you wouldn't talk about it, because it partly makes me feel as if my feelings were hurt, and partly makes me feel terribly self-conscious."

"Then perhaps it _was_ you, a little," said Francis quietly.

Marjorie moved away from him, and went into the kitchen again, with her head held high to hide the fact that her cheeks were burning. He hadn't any right to do that to her. Why, any amount of men might be making desperate love to dream-Marjories--Mr. Logan, for instance,--only his love-making would probably be exceedingly full of quotations, and rather slow and involved.

She turned, dimpling over her shoulder at Francis, who had been standing in rather a dream, where she had left him.

"Francis! Do you suppose any other men are doing that?" she asked mischievously. "Supposing our good friend Mr. Logan, for instance, has installed me in a carved renaissance chair in his apartment, and is saying nice things to me----"

"Marjorie!"

"Well, you see!" said Marjorie. "It isn't a good precedent."

"Well, I'm your husband," muttered Francis quite illogically.

"Oh, this has gone far enough," said Marjorie with determination. And she went back to the kitchen.

"I'll leave you here, if that's the case," said Francis in a friendly enough way. "I have to go over to the other cabin and see how things are and then out to where some work is going on. Can you find amus.e.m.e.nt here for awhile?"