She sighed and rippled her fingers along the keyboard.
"But, oh, if only we could get away--Timbuctoo, Mokpo, or Jericho."
"Don't tell me you've ever been to Mokpo," Graham laughed.
She nodded. "Cross my heart, solemnly, hope to die. It was with Dick in the All Away and in the long ago. It might almost be said we honeymooned in Mokpo."
And while Graham exchanged reminiscences of Mokpo with her, he cudgeled his brain to try and decide whether her continual reference to her husband was deliberate.
"I should imagine you found it such a paradise here," he was saying.
"I do, I do," she assured him with what seemed unnecessary vehemence. "But I don't know what's come over me lately. I feel it imperative to be up and away. The spring fret, I suppose; the Red Gods and their medicine. And if only Dick didn't insist on working his head off and getting tied down with projects! Do you know, in all the years of our marriage, the only really serious rival I have ever had has been this ranch. He's pretty faithful, and the ranch is his first love. He had it all planned and started before he ever met me or knew I existed."
"Here, let us try this together," Graham said abruptly, placing the song on the rack before her.
"Oh, but it's the 'Gypsy Trail,'" she protested. "It will only make my mood worse." And she hummed: "'Follow the Romany patteran West to the sinking sun, Till the junk sails lift through the homeless drift, And the East and the West are one.'
"What is the Romany patteran?" she broke off to ask. "I've always thought of it as patter, or patois, the Gypsy patois, and somehow it strikes me as absurd to follow a language over the world--a sort of philological excursion."
"In a way the patteran is speech," he answered. "But it always says one thing: 'This way I have passed.' Two sprigs, crossed in certain ways and left upon the trail, compose the patteran. But they must always be of different trees or shrubs. Thus, on the ranch here, a patteran could be made of manzanita and madrono, of oak and spruce, of buckeye and alder, of redwood and laurel, of huckleberry and lilac. It is a sign of Gypsy comrade to Gypsy comrade, of Gypsy lover to Gypsy lover." And he hummed: "'Back to the road again, again, Out of a clear sea track; Follow the cross of the Gypsy trail, Over the world and back.'"