"Now you aren't to worry. I'm going to keep my word. You're safe with
me, Marge. I'm going to take care of you as if I were your brother and
your father and your cousin Anna----"
She broke in with an irrepressible giggle.
"Oh, please don't go that far! Two male relatives will be
plenty. . . . I--I really got all the care from Cousin Anna that I
wanted."
He looked relieved at her being able to laugh, and bent over the tents
again in the moonlight.
"There you are. And here are the blankets. We're near enough to the
road so you won't be frightened, and enough in the bushes so we'll be
secluded. Good-night. I'll call you to-morrow, when it's time to go
on. I know this part of the country like my hand, and here's some
water in case you're thirsty in the night. Oh, and here are towels."
This last matter-of-fact touch almost set Marjorie off again in
hysterical laughter. Being eloped with by a gentleman who thoughtfully
set towels and water outside her door was really _too_ much. She
pinned the tent together with a hatpin, slipped off some of her
clothes--it did not seem enough like going to bed to undress
altogether, and she mistrusted the balsam boughs with blankets over
them that pretended to be a bed in the corner--and flung herself down
and laughed and laughed and laughed till she nearly cried.
She did not quite cry. The boughs proved to have been arranged by a
master hand, and she was very tired and exceedingly sleepy. She pulled
hairpins out of her hair in a half-dream, so that they had to be sought
for painstakingly next morning when she woke. She burrowed into the
blankets, and knew nothing of the world till nine next morning.
"I can't knock on a tent-flap," said Francis's buoyant voice outside
then. "But it's time we were on our way, Marjorie. There ought to be
a bathrobe in that bundle of Lucille's. Slip it on and I'll show you
the brook."
She reached for a mirror, which showed that, though tousled, she was
pretty, took one of the long breaths that seemed so frequently
necessary in dealing with Francis, said "in for a penny, in for a
pound," and did as she was directed. The bath-robe wasn't a bath-robe,
but something rather more civilized, which had been, as a matter of
fact, part of her trousseau, in that far-off day when trousseaux were
so frequently done, and seemed such fun to buy. She came out of the
tent rather timidly. "Good gracious, child, that wasn't what I meant!"
exclaimed Francis, seeming appallingly dressed and neat and ready for
life. "It's too cold for that sort of thing. Here!"
He picked up one of the blankets, wrapped it around her, gave her a
steer in a direction away from the road, and vanished.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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