Canada -- Fiction; Frontier and pioneer life -- Ontario -- Fiction
"That's awkward," he admitted. "You'll tell me all about this thing
later on, won't you, because I might be able to help you out. But
you'll be all right for a while, anyway. I'll take you there."
"Please start at once," she cried, desperately. "I--I can't stay here
for another instant."
"I can be ready in a very few minutes," he told her, quietly. "But
won't you please come over to the shack. I'm sure you're beginning to
feel the cold. You--you're shivering and--and I'm afraid you look
rather ill."
She had insisted on Stefan's taking back some of the things she had
borrowed from his wife, and had been standing there in rather
inadequate clothing. Ennis pulled off his heavy mackinaw jacket.
"You must put this on at once," he told her, gently enough, "and come
right over there with me."
Madge shrank from him, as if she feared to be touched by him, and yet
there was something in the frank way in which he addressed her,
perhaps also in the clear and unembarrassed look of his eyes, that was
gradually allaying her fears and the fierce repulsion of the first few
moments. Finally, chilled as she was to the very marrow of her bones,
she consented to accept his offer and submitted to his helping her on
with the coat.
"There's a good fire in the shack just now," he told her. "It's
absolutely necessary for you to get thoroughly warmed up before you
start off again. A cup of hot tea would do you a lot of good, too,
after that long ride on Stefan's toboggan. It's no joke of an
undertaking for a--a young lady who isn't used to such things."
Madge was still hesitating. The suffering look that had come into her
eyes moved the young man to greater pity for her.
"I--I give you my word you have absolutely nothing to fear," he
assured her, whereupon she followed him meekly, feeling very faint
now. She half feared that she might have to clutch at his sleeve, if
her footsteps failed her, for she felt that at any moment she might
stagger and fall. She gasped again as she looked at the shack they
were nearing, but, as she beheld the scenery of the great pool,
something in it that was very grand and beautiful appealed to her for
an instant. Yet she felt crushed by it, as if she had been some
infinitesimal insect beside that stupendous crashing of waters, before
the great ledges whose tops were hirsute with gnarled firs and twisted
jack-pines. She stopped for a moment, perhaps owing to her weakness,
or possibly because of awe at the majesty of the scene.
"I just love it," said the man. "It grows more utterly splendid every
time one looks at it. See that mass of rubbish on the top of that
great hemlock. It is the nest of a pair of ospreys. They come every
year, I've been told. Last summer I saw them circling high up in the
heavens, at times, and they would utter shrill cries as if they had
been the guardians of the falls and warned me off. But we had better
hurry in, Miss--Miss Nelson."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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