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They slipped through the next lock and out upon the long length of Cherokee, the lake of the island which was their destination. It seemed to bring self-consciousness upon the speaker. "You are so the same as you used to be," he said, "I forget. How do I know you want to hear all this?" "You do know," said Alexina, honestly. He did not answer.
Gora gave a slight withdrawing movement as if something sacred had been touched. But she answered: "Oh...some day I may have something to tell you....You said much the same thing to me a little while ago. Tell me now." Alexina turned over on her elbow to beat up her pillows. Then she answered lightly but firmly: "Not unless you promise to do likewise. Mine is such a little thing anyhow.
But they were loyally devoted to Alexina and obeyed, as a matter of course, her request to help her make the book a success. They worked with the sterner determination as Alexina in her own efforts was obliged to be extremely subtle. Besides, it, was rather thrilling not only to know a real, author but almost to have her in the family as it were.
"We Groomes and Ballingers always stand by one another, don't we? The Abbotts, too. Besides, it will certainly be no sacrifice on any of our parts. It will mean a great deal to me to spend six months in town, and I know that Tom has grown as tired of motoring back and forth every day as be used to be of the train." "It will be heavenly just having you." Alexina spoke with perfect sincerity.
And I went to pieces like a cheaply built schooner in its first storm. There's nothing, it seems, in being well brought up, when circumstances are too strong for you." Alexina forebore the obvious reply. "Of course you were a little mad," she said, rather at a loss. "No, I wasn't. I'd always been a cool speculator, and I'd never taken long chances in business before.
"It's because he's a vain boy, little Mary Alexina Blair, and filled with self-importance, that he wants you to know, and he only wants me to tell you because he has not quite the assurance to do it himself; that is why he wants me to tell about the great, white-prowed Argo " "We call them bows, not prows," came up out of the dusk. But she refused the correction.
Alexina, who still hoped that she would always be able to regard Life as God's good joke, rather sympathized with him, and assured him that he would have nothing to apprehend from Gora in the future: she had no more fervent wish than to keep out of his way. He found himself on the whole very comfortable. Maria was always most kind, Alexina polite and amiable, and Tom "decent."
From her kitchen window Alexina could see brisk preparations going on in the Tracy kitchen. She knew Josie and Duncan were all alone; their parents had gone to spend Christmas with friends in Lessing. In spite of her hurry and excitement Alexina found time to sigh. Last Christmas Josie and Duncan had come over and eaten their dinner with them. But now last Christmas seemed very far away.
She had been alarmed at one time at certain symptoms of cleverness she noticed in the child, and at certain enthusiastic remarks in the letters of Ballinger Groome, with whose family Alexina had spent her vacations during her two years in New York at school.
He was taller and thinner, and looked different, and neither could find anything to say on the way. Charlotte was sitting in the parlour, her wraps half-removed. They had only just arrived, and the stillness and closeness of a newly opened house was about. "How does one pack furniture for moving, Willy?" Charlotte began as he appeared. But he was bringing Alexina.
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