A moment later they were in the kitchen.  And after the minimum time had elapsed during which all three talked at once recounting their own individual anxieties, Ussher asked: 

“Where’s Max?”

Christine cast down her eyes with a sort of Paul-and-Virginia expression, as she answered:  “Oh, he is sleeping in the tool-house!”

“Well, I call that damned nonsense,” said Ussher.  “Let a man freeze to death!  Upon my word, Christine, I thought you had more sense.”  And he strode away to the back door.  “Yes, here are his tracks, poor fellow.”  Ussher went out after him, and Hickson turned back.

“But you think I was right, don’t you, Edward?” said Christine, for she had never failed to elicit commendation from Edward.

But now his brow was dark.  “But, I say, Christine,” he said, “there’s one thing I don’t understand.  These tracks of his footsteps in the snow.”

“He didn’t fly, Ned, even if he is an aviator.”

“Yes, but it didn’t stop snowing until four o’clock this morning.”

How irritating the weather always is, Christine thought.  For though she was willing to use scandal as a weapon over Riatt, she was not sure that she wished to put it into Hickson’s hands.

She thought hard, and then said brightly: 

“Oh, perhaps he came back for his breakfast before I was up.”

Hickson shook his head:  “They only lead one way,” he said.

In the face of the tactlessness of hard facts, Christine decided to create a diversion.

“I can’t stand here gossiping about the conduct of an aviator,” she said, “when there’s so much to be done.  Look at all these dirty plates.  What ought to be done with them, Edward, dear?” she appealed to him as to a fountain of wisdom, and he did not fail her.

“They ought to be washed,” he said.  “Give me a towel.  I’ll do it.”  And he felt more than rewarded when, as she handed him a towel, her hand touched his.

The many duties of which she had just spoken seemed suddenly to have melted away, for she sat down quite idly and watched him.

“How well you do it, Edward,” she said, not quite honestly, for she compared his slow gestures very unfavorably with Riatt’s deft hands.  “It’s quite as if you had washed dishes all your life.”

“Ah, Christine,” he answered, looking at her sentimentally over a coffee-cup, “I shouldn’t ask anything better than to wash your dishes for the rest of my life.”

“Thank you, Edward, but I think I should ask something a good deal better,” she answered.

It was on this scene that Ussher and Riatt entered, and the eyes of the latter twinkled.

“Engaged a kitchen-maid, I see,” he said in a low tone to Christine.

“I think it’s so good for people to do something useful now and then, don’t you?”

“A form of education that you offer almost every one who comes near you.”