Minutes pa.s.sed before either spoke. Then all at once the Girl rose and took the chair facing his, the table between them as at first.

"Wowkle, serve the coffee!" again she called.

Immediately, Wowkle emerged from the cupboard, took the coffee-pot from the fire and filled the cups that had been kept warm on the fireplace base, and after placing a cup beside each plate she squatted down before the fire in watchful silence.

"But when it's very cold up here, cold, and it snows?" queried Johnson, his admiration for the plucky, quaint little figure before him growing by leaps and bounds.

"Oh, the boys come up an' digs me out o' my front door like--like--" She paused, her sunny laugh rippling out at the recollection of it all, and Johnson noted the two delightful dimples in her rounded cheeks. Indeed, she had never appeared prettier to him than when displaying her two rows of perfect, dazzling teeth, which was the case every time that she laughed.

"--like a little rabbit, eh?" he supplemented, joining in the laugh.

She nodded eagerly.

"I get digged out near every day when the mine's shet down an' Academy opens," went on the Girl in the same happy strain, her big blue eyes dancing with merriment.

Johnson looked at her wonderingly; he questioned:

"Academy? Here? Why, who teaches in your Academy?"

"Me--I'm her--I'm teacher," she told him with not a little show of pride.

With difficulty Johnson suppressed a smile; nevertheless he observed soberly:

"Oh, so you're the teacher?"

"Yep--I learn m'self an' the boys at the same time," she hastened to explain, and dropped a heaping teaspoon of coa.r.s.e brown sugar into his cup. "But o' course Academy's suspended when ther's a blizzard on 'cause no girl could git down the mountain then."

"Is it so very severe here when there's a blizzard on?" Johnson was saying, when there came to his ears a strange sound--the sound of the wind rising in the canyon below.

The Girl looked at him in blank astonishment--a look that might easily have been interpreted as saying, "Where do you hail from?" She answered:

"Is it . . .? Oh, Lordy, they come in a minute! All of a sudden you don't know where you are--it's awful!"

"Not many women--" digressed the man, glancing apprehensively towards the door, but she cut him short swiftly with the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n:

"Bosh!" And picking up a plate she raised it high in the air the better to show off its contents. "Charlotte rusks an' lemming turnover!" she announced, searching his face for some sign of joy, her own face lighting up perceptibly.

"Well, this is a treat!" cried out Johnson between sips of coffee.

"Have one?"

"You bet!" he returned with unmistakable pleasure in his voice.

The Girl served him with one of each, and when he thanked her she beamed with happiness.

"Let me send you some little souvenir of to-night"--he said, a little while later, his admiring eyes settled on her hair of burnished gold which glistened when the light fell upon it--"something that you'd just love to read in your course of teaching at the Academy." He paused to search his mind for something suitable to suggest to her; at length he questioned: "Now, what have you been reading lately?"

The Girl's face broke into smiles as she answered:

"Oh, it's an awful funny book about a kepple. He was a cla.s.sic an' his name was Dent."

Johnson knitted his brows and thought a moment. "He was a cla.s.sic, you say, and his name was--Oh, yes, I know--Dante," he declared, with difficulty controlling the laughter that well-nigh convulsed him. "And you found Dante funny, did you?"

"Funny? I roared!" acknowledged the Girl with a frankness that was so genuine that Johnson could not help but admire her all the more. "You see, he loved a lady--" resumed the Girl, toying idly with her spoon.

"--Beatrice," supplemented Johnson, p.r.o.nouncing the name with the Italian accent which, by the way, was not lost on the Girl.

"How?" she asked quickly, with eyes wide open.

Johnson ignored the question. Anxious to hear her interpretation of the story, he requested her to continue.

"He loved a lady--" began the Girl, and broke off short. And going over to the book-shelf she took down a volume and began to finger the leaves absently. Presently she came back, and fixing her eyes upon him, she went on: "It made me think of it, what you said down to the saloon to-night about livin' so you didn't care what come after. Well, he made up his min', this Dent--Dantes--that one hour o' happiness with her was worth the whole da--" She checked the word on her tongue, and concluded: "outfit that come after. He was willin' to sell out his chances for sixty minutes with 'er. Well, I jest put the book down an' hollered."

And once more she broke into a hearty laugh.

"Of course you did," agreed Johnson, joining in the laugh. "All the same," he presently added, "you knew he was right."

"I didn't!" she contradicted with spirit, and slowly went back to the book-shelf with the book.

"You did."

"Didn't!"

"You did."

"Didn't! Didn't!"

"I don't--"

"You do, you do," insisted the Girl, plumping down into the chair which she had vacated at the table.

"Do you mean to say--" Johnson got no further, for the Girl, with a navete that made her positively bewitching to the man before her, went on as if there had been no interruption:

"That a feller could so wind h'ms'lf up as to say, 'Jest give me one hour o' your sa.s.siety; time ain't nothin', nothin' ain't nothin' only to be a da--darn fool over you!' Ain't it funny to feel like that?" And then, before Johnson could frame an answer:

"Yet, I s'pose there are people that love into the grave an' into death an' after." The Girl's voice lowered, stopped. Then, looking straight ahead of her, her eyes glistening, she broke out with:

"Golly, it jest lifts you right up by your bootstraps to think of it, don't it?"

Johnson was not smiling now, but sat gazing intently at her through half-veiled lids.

"It does have that effect," he answered, the wonder of it all creeping into his voice.

"Yet, p'r'aps he was ahead o' the game. P'r'aps--" She did not finish the sentence, but broke out with fresh enthusiasm: "Oh, say, I jest love this conversation with you! I love to hear you talk! You give me idees!"

Johnson's heart was too full for utterance; he could only think of his own happiness. The next instant the Girl called to Wowkle to bring the candle, while she, still eager and animated, her eyes bright, her lips curving in a smile, took up a cigar and handed it to him, saying:

"One o' your real Havanas!"

"But I"--began Johnson, protestingly.