Page:Icebound.pdf/80

68

(smiles to himself at the remembrance)

They was all dressed up, the whole family, and there I was with just my dirty old uniform.

Yes.

(lost in his recollections)

It was a fine dinner, but it wasn’t that. It was their doin’ so much for me, folks like that—I ’ve sort of pictured ’em lots of times since then.

Go on.

All of the young ones laughing and happy, and the mother too, laughing and tryin’ to talk to me, and neither one of us knowing much about what the other one was sayin’.

[He and Jane both laugh.

And the oldest daughter? The one that was most grown up?

She was scared of me somehow, but I don’t know as ever I ’ve seen a girl like her, before or since.

Maybe ’twas that dress you told me about; seems to me you don’t remember much else about her; not so much as what color her hair was, only just that that dress was blue.

(thoughtfully)

Yes.

(sewing)

Sometimes you say dark blue!

[She is watching him closely through half-shut eyes.