Jessie waited on the table herself. She set upon it such a dinner as neither of her guests had eaten in years. Venison broiled to a turn, juicy, succulent mallard ducks from the cold storage of their larder, mashed potatoes with gravy, young boiled onions from Whoop-Up, home-made rubaboo of delicious flavor, hot biscuits and wild-strawberry jam! And finally, with the tea, a brandy-flavored plum pudding that an old English lady at Winnipeg had taught Jessie how to make.
Onistah ate lying on the couch. Afterward, filled to repletion, with the sense of perfect contentment a good dinner brings, the two young men stuffed their pipes and puffed strata of smoke toward the log rafters of the room. Jessie cleared the table, then sat down and put the last stitches in the gun-case she had been working at intermittently for a month. It was finished, but she had not till now stitched the initials into the cloth.
As the swift fingers of the girl flashed back and forth, both men watched, not too obviously, the profile shadowed by the dark, abundant, shining hair. The picture of her was an intimate one, but Tom's tricky imagination tormented him with one of still nearer personal association. He saw her in his own house, before his own fireside, a baby clinging to her skirt. Then, resolutely, he put the mental etching behind him. She loved his friend Beresford, a man out of a thousand, and of course he loved her. Had he not seen her go straight to his arms after her horrible experience with West?
Matapi-Koma presently waddled out of the room and they could hear the clatter of dishes.
"I told her I'd help her wash them if she'd wait," explained Jessie. "But she'd rather do them now and go to bed. My conscience is clear, anyhow." She added with a little bubble of laughter, "And I don't have to do the work. Is that the kind of a conscience you have, Mr. Morse?"
"If I were you my conscience would tell me that I couldn't go and leave my guests," he answered.
She raked him with a glance of merry derision. "Oh, I know how yours works. I wouldn't have it for anything. It's an awf'lly bossy one. It's sending you out to the Barrens with Win Beresford just because he's your friend."
"Not quite. I have another reason too," he replied.