The equanimity of Margaret's temper, temporarily disturbed by her vivid misconception of Kennedy Square, was restored. The dry shelter, the warm fire, the sense of escape from the elements, all filled her heart with gladness. Never since the day she met him on the bridge had she been so happy.
Again, as when Oliver championed her in the old Academy school-room, there stole over her a vague sense of pleasure in being protected.
"Isn't it jolly!" she said as she sat hunched up beside him. "I'm as dry as a bone, not a drop on me."
Oliver was even more buoyant. There was something irresistibly cosey and comfortable in the shelter which he had provided for her--something of warmth and companionship and rest. But more intensely enjoyable than all was the thought that he was taking care of a woman for the first time in his life, as it seemed to him. And in a house of his own making, and in a place, too, of his own choosing, surrounded by the big trees that he loved. He had even outwitted the elements--the wind and the rain and the chill--in her defence. Old Moose Hillock could bellow now and White Face roar, and the wind and rain vent their wrath, but Margaret, close beside him, would still be warm and dry and safe.
By this time she had hung her tam-o'-shanter and jacket on a nail that she had found in the bark over her head, and was arranging her hair.
"It's just like life, Oliver, isn't it?" she said, as she tightened the coil in her neck. "All we want, after all, is a place to get into out of the storm and wet, not a big place, either."
"What kind of a place?" He was on his knees digging a little trench with his knife, piling up the moist earth in miniature embankments, so that the dripping from the roof would not spatter this Princess of his whom he had saved from the tempest outside.
"Oh, any kind of a place if you have people you're fond of. I'd love a real studio somewhere, and a few things hung about--some old Delft and one or two bits of stuff--and somebody to take care of me."
Oliver shifted his pipe in his mouth and looked up. Would she, with all her independence, really like to have someone take care of her? He had seen no evidence of it.
"Who?" he asked. He had never heard her mention anybody's name--but then she had not told him everything;
He had dropped his eyes again, finishing the drain and flattening the boughs under her, to make the seat the easier.
"Oh, some old woman, perhaps, like dear old Mrs.
Mulligan." There was no coquetry in her tone.
She was speaking truthfully out of her heart.
"Anything more?" Oliver's voice had lost its buoyancy now. The pipe was upside down, the ashes falling on his shirt.
"Yes--lots of portraits to paint."
"And a medal at the Salon?" asked Oliver, brushing off the waste of his pipe from his coat-sleeve.
"Yes, I don't mind, if my pictures deserve it," and she looked at him quizzically, while a sudden flash of humor lightened up her face. "What would you want, Mr. Happy-go-lucky, if you had your wish?"
"I, Madge, dear?" he exclaimed, with a sudden outburst of tenderness, raising his body erect and looking earnestly into her eyes, which were now within a hand's breadth of his own. She winced a little, but it did not offend her, nor did she move an inch. "Oh, I don't know what I want. What I want, I suppose, is what I shall never have, little girl."
She wasn't his little girl, or anybody else's, she thought to herself--she was firmly convinced of that fact. It was only one of his terms of endearment.
He had them for everybody--even for Hank and for Mrs. Taft--whom he called "Taffy," and who loved to hear him say it, and she old enough to be his grandmother! She stole a look into his face.
There was a cloud over it, a slight knitting of the brows, and a pained expression about the mouth that were new to her.
"I'd like to be a painter," he continued, "but mother would never consent." As be spoke, he sank back from her slowly, his knees still bent under him. Then be added, with a sigh, "She wouldn't think it respectable. Anything but a painter, she says."
Margaret looked out through the forest and watched a woodpecker at work on the dry side of a hollow trunk, the side protected from the driving rain.
"And you would give up your career because she wants it? How do you know she's right about it?
And who's to suffer if she's wrong? Be a painter, Oliver, if you want to! Your mother can't coddle you up forever! No mother should. Do what you can do best, and to please yourself, not somebody else," and then she laughed lightly as if to break the force of her words.
Oliver looked at her in indignation that anyone--even Margaret--should speak so of his mother.
It was the first time in all his life that he had heard her name mentioned without the profound reverence it deserved. Then a sense of the injustice of her words took possession of him, as the solemn compact he had made with his mother not to be a burden on her while the mortgage was unpaid, rose in his mind. This thought and Margaret's laugh softened any hurt her words had given him, although the lesson that they were intended to teach lingered in his memory for many days thereafter.
