, too,
bearing on institutional reforms--

Here Mrs. Leroy and Molly came back, Molly in a white wrapper and
Charlotte bearing a pillow and a silk quilt.

"Willy's calling," Charlotte told Alexina; "he wants you."

He was at the foot of the stairs, and, waiting for her to get down,
watched her hand on the banister. The wood was dark and the hand was
white and slender. Then he held out a big, checked apron. She walked
into it and looked over her shoulder while he tied the strings behind.

It takes time to set a table when neither is just certain where things
are to be found. Hunting together in sideboard, cupboards, and on
pantry shelves brings about a feeling of knowing each other very well.
There was so much, too, to talk about.

"Do you remember--" it was Alexina pausing with a goblet in hand to
ask it.

"Have you forgot--" King, producing a carving set, would rejoin.

Presently she paused. Twice she started to speak, hesitated, then
said, "There's a thing I want to ask you, or, rather, want to say--"
Her voice was a little tremulous and breathless.

"Yes."

"You remember--that is, you haven't forgot the 'King William'?"

She was looking away from him and he looking at her, his mouth odd,
yet smiling, too. She was an honest and a pleasant thing to look upon.
"Yes," he told her, "as well as I remember the raft we put off on
from the desert island and the plains back of the stable--have you
forgotten the trackless plains where we sat down to starve in the
snow, with never a sign of deer or buffalo for days, or even a thing
on wing? We'd just lighted on Hiawatha those days. There was an
Indian, by the way, came up from the grass water yesterday and brought
us venison for to-day."

It was evident he did not mean to let her return to the subject.

Presently Alexina untied the apron. "I must see your mother some," she
said.

"But she does not want you," declared his mother's son; "she's
overjoyed to think you're with me. She thinks there is something
deficient in her son; she insists I've never spoken to a girl since we
left you in Louisville. Besides, she's in the kitchen, I hear her out
there now, all fluttered herself and fluttering Aunt Mandy."

But Alexina would go. "I must call Molly in time for dinner," she
insisted.

CHAPTER FOUR

Now William Leroy supposed Mrs. Garnier to be in his mother's room. A
moment later he followed Alexina up the stairs, meaning to get
something out of his desk