"Oh, thank you, Mr. Pennington!" she said, taking it for granted that it was her accustomed helper.

"It isn't Pennington; it's--me," said Francis. "I--I wouldn't have bothered you, but you see the men sent me out here on an errand."

"The men sent you on an errand?" she said wonderingly. "That sounds topsy-turvy. I thought you sent them on errands."

"Not this kind. They want to know if you won't sit down and eat with them to-night. The flowers and the food made a hit, and they agree with everybody else in the world, as far as I can see," said Francis, with bitterness in his voice, "that this is no work for you to be doing."

"Did they dare to say so?" said Marjorie angrily.

"No--oh, no. Don't mind me, Marjorie. I'm a little tired and nervous, I expect--like Logan," he ended, trying to smile. "Will you come?"

"Why, of course!" said Marjorie instantly. "And I think it's _sweet_ of them to want me! Tell them just to wait till I take my ap.r.o.n off, and I'll be with them."

He went back and she followed him and sat down. At first she felt embarra.s.sed, a little--she felt as if she were entertaining a large dinner-party, and most of them strangers. But Pennington, her unfailing comfort, was at one side of her, and the friendly, if inarticulate, Ba'tiste at the other; and presently she was chattering on, and liking it very much.

None of the men had seen much of women for a long time. A couple of the better-cla.s.s ones went into town, or what pa.s.sed for it, occasionally, to such dances as the few women near by could get up.

But that was practically all they saw of girls. And this "little thing"--it was a phrase they always used in speaking of her, till the very last--with her pretty face and pretty, shy ways, and excellent cooking--and more than all, her pluck--won them completely.

And when she finally, with obvious delight in their delight, produced the pudding, everything was over but the shouting, as they told her husband afterward. She had been a bit apprehensive about it, but it proved to be a good pudding, and large enough. Just large enough, though. They finished it to the very last crumb, sauce and all, and thanked her almost with tears. Pierre, it appeared, had not cooked with any art, he had merely seen to it that there was enough stoking material three times a day. From the moment of that meal on, anything that Marjorie wanted of those men, to the half of their weekly wages, was hers for the asking.

She liked it very much. Everybody likes to be admired and appreciated.

She could not help casting a glance of triumph over at Francis, where he sat maritally at the other end of the table, the most silent person present.

Pennington helped her clear away after supper. Indeed, compet.i.tion to help Marjorie clear away was so strong that Pennington had to use his authority before the men settled down to their usual routine of card-playing or lounging about on the gra.s.s outside. She accepted his help gratefully, for she was beginning to feel as if she had always known him. She did not think of him in the least as a man. He seemed more like an earthly providence.

"You know, I really am very strong," she explained to him as he said something that betrayed his feeling that this work would be too much for her. "I think I shall be able to do all this. Really, it isn't anything more than lots of women have to do who keep boarders. And it isn't for----"

She stopped herself. She had been on the point of saying, "And it isn't for long, anyway." She did not know what Francis had told the men about their plans, or his plans for her cooking, and she was resolved to be absolutely loyal to him. When she went he should have nothing to say about her but that she had behaved as well as any woman could.

"If you're ready, we'll go back to the cabin, Marjorie," said Francis, appearing on the edge of the threshold, looking even more like a thundercloud than normal lately.

She hung up the dishcloth, gave Pennington a last grateful smile, and followed Francis back.

"Pennington's a good fellow," he said abruptly as they gained their own porch, "but I don't want you to have too much to do with him. He's kindly and all that, but he's a remittance man."

Marjorie's eyes opened wide with excitement at this. She had heard of remittance men, but never seen one before.

"How perfectly thrilling!" she said.

CHAPTER X

Francis looked at her as if she had said something very surprising.

"Thrilling?" he said, apparently considering it the wrong adjective.

She nodded.

"Why, yes. I've read of remittance men all my life, but I never dreamed I'd meet one. And--I always wanted to know, Francis," said she, as she opened the door and walked in and settled herself cozily on the window-seat. "What does he remit? They never say."

"He doesn't remit," explained Francis rather disgustedly, following her over and sitting down by her at the other corner of the seat. "Other people do it."

"'Curiouser and Curiouser! I begin to think I'm in Wonderland!'" she quoted. "I think the easiest way for you to do will be just to tell me all about remittance men, the way you do a child when it starts to ask questions. Just what are they, and do they all look like Pennington, and are they trained to be it, or does it come natural?"

"A remittance man," Francis explained again, "is a term, more or less, of disgrace. He is a man who has done something in his own country which makes his relatives wish him out of it. So they remit money to him as long as he stays away."

If he expected to make Marjorie feel shocked at Pennington by this tale he was quite disappointed.

"And does Pennington get money for staying away, besides what he helps you and gets?" she demanded. "What does he do with it all?"

"I don't suppose it's a great deal," said Francis reluctantly.

"Well, all I have to say is, I'm perfectly certain that if anybody's paying Pennington to stay away from England, they're some horrid kind of person that just is disagreeable, and doesn't know his real worth.

Why, Francis, he's helped me learn the ways here, and looked after me, as if he was my mother. He's exactly like somebody's mother."

Francis could not help smiling a little. Marjorie, when she wanted to be--sometimes when she did not want to be--was irresistible.

"But, Marjorie," he began to explain to her very seriously, "however much he may seem like a mother, he isn't one. He's a man, though he's rather an old one. And he did do things in England so he had to leave.

I don't want him to fall in love with you; it would be embarra.s.sing for several reasons."

"But why should he fall in love with me?" she demanded innocently.

"Lots of people don't."

"But, Marjorie," her husband remonstrated, "they do. Look at Logan, now. No reason on earth would have brought him up here but being in love with you. You might as well admit it."

"All I ever did was to listen to him when he talked," said Marjorie, shrugging one shoulder. She liked what Francis was saying, but she felt in honor bound to be truthful about such things. "And besides you, there was only one other man ever asked me to marry him--I mean, not counting Logan, if you do count him. Oh, yes, and then there was another one yet, with a guitar. He always said he proposed to me. He wrote me a letter all mixed up, about everything in the world; and I was awfully busy just then, selling tickets for a church fair of Cousin Anna's. I never was any good selling tickets anyhow," explained Marjorie, settling herself more nestlingly in her corner of the window-seat; "and so when he said somewhere in the letter that anything he could ever do for me he would do on the wings of the wind, I wrote back and said yes, he could buy two tickets for the church fair. And, oh, but he was furious! He sent the check for the tickets with the maddest letter you ever saw; and he accused me of refusing him in a cold and ignoring manner. And I'd torn up the letter, the way I always do, and so I couldn't prove anything about it to him. But he didn't come to the fair. Ye-es, I suppose that was a proposal. The man ought to know, shouldn't he?"

Francis was tired; he had a consciousness of having behaved unkindly that weighed him down and made for gloom. He had come in with Marjorie for the purpose of delivering an imposing warning. But he couldn't help laughing.

"I suppose so," he acknowledged. "Never mind, Marjorie, you didn't really want him, did you?"

She shook her head.

"Oh, no. n.o.body could. Or--wait, somebody must, because I think he's married. But he wasn't the kind a girl that cared what she got wanted."

But Francis went back to Pennington.

"About Pennington," he began again. "You don't know how easy it is for you to let a man think you're encouraging him, when you really aren't saying a word or doing a thing, or think you aren't. I want you to promise me you'll be very careful where he's concerned, even cold."

"Cold!" she said indignantly. "But I'm married! You seem to forget that!"

Francis had not forgotten it in the least. He forgot it all too little for his own comfort, he might have told her. But he was rebuked.

"I didn't know you went on the principle that you had to act exactly like a regular married woman," he apologized with meekness.

"I do," she said shortly.