"
"Your supper, see, is ready," she said. "I venture to hope your appetite
has not suffered because of long absence from your friends."
He could only dumbly answer by a protesting motion of the hand, and his
smile was not remarkably buoyant.
The next morning they started on their moose-hunt. Gregory Thorne was
cast down when he crossed the threshold into the winter morning without
hand-clasp or god-speed from Margaret Malbrouck; but Mrs. Malbrouck was
there, and Gregory, looking into her eyes, thought how good a thing it
would be for him, if some such face looked benignly out on him every
morning, before he ventured forth into the deceitful day. But what was
the use of wishing! Margaret evidently did not care. And though the air
was clear and the sun shone brightly, he felt there was a cheerless wind
blowing on him; a wind that chilled him; and he hummed to himself
bitterly a song of the voyageurs:
"O, O, the winter wind, the North wind,
My snow-bird, where art thou gone?
O, O, the wailing wind the night wind,
The cold nest; I am alone.
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