And she liked this suit best of all.  She had been peeping through the curtains and her critical admiring eyes had missed no detail.  She saw that the cavalier boots were gone, but she recognized the short pea-jacket and the loose rolling collar of the soft flannel shirt circling the strong, bronzed throat, and the dash of red in the silken scarf.

And so it is not surprising that when he got within sight of her windows, his cheeks aflame with the crisp air, his eyes snapping with the joy of once more hearing her voice, her heart should have throbbed with an undefinable happiness and pride as she realized that for a time, at least, he was to be all her own.  And yet when he had again taken her hand—­the warmth of his last pressure still lingered in her palm—­and had looked into her eyes and had said how he hoped he had not kept her waiting, all she could answer in reply was the non-committal remark: 

“Well, now you look something like”—­at which Jack’s heart gave a great bound, any compliment, however slight, being so much manna to his hungry soul; Ruth adding, as she led the way into the sitting-room, “I lighted the wood fire because I was afraid you might still be cold.”

And ten minutes had been enough for Ruth.

It had been one of those lightning changes which a pretty girl can always make when her lover is expected any instant and she does not want to lose a moment of his time, but it had sufficed.  Something soft and clinging it was now; her lovely, rounded figure moving in its folds as a mermaid moves in the surf; her hair shaken cut and caught up again in all its delicious abandon; her cheeks, lips, throat, rose-color in the joy of her expectancy.

He sat drinking it all in.  Had a mass of outdoor roses been laid by his side, their fragrance filling the air, the beauty of their coloring entrancing his soul, he could not have been more intoxicated by their beauty.

And yet, strange to say, only commonplaces rose to his lips.  All the volcano beneath, and only little spats of smoke and dying bits of ashes in evidence!  Even the message of his Chief about her not getting a new bonnet all summer seemed a godsend under the circumstances.  Had there been any basis for her self-denial he would not have told her, knowing how much anxiety she had suffered an hour before.  But there was no real good reason why she should economize either in bonnets or in anything else she wanted.  McGowan, of course, would be held responsible; for whatever damage had been done he would have to pay.  He had been present when the young architect’s watchful and trained eye had discovered some defects in the masonry of the wing walls of the McGowan culvert bridging the stream, and had heard him tell the contractor, in so many words that if the water got away and smashed anything below him he would charge the loss to his account.  McGowan had groveled in dissent, but it had made no impression on Garry, whose duty it was to see that the work was properly carried out and whose signature loosened the village purse strings.