Her companion laughed. “But suppose, after all, her husband should return.”
“That would make a mess of it.” She looked him over thoughtfully. “Do you know,” she said suddenly, “now I come to think of it, I wonder why you don’t get married and have your own home.”
He smiled indulgently. “Because I like to stay with Polly and you,” he answered lightly.
“Is that it? No, I don’t believe it is exactly,” she said thoughtfully. “I believe at first you thought you had done us a wrong by trying to take our clearing from us, and you wanted to make up for it, and now you—you feel sorry for us and you are staying because you know we need you. We do need you.” She nodded her head decidedly. “Everything has gone so well since you took hold, and soon we’ll be having as good a clearing as the M’Cleans’.”
The young man made no answer. She had followed his own thought, and he wondered that so thoughtless a little creature as she had always appeared to be should have so good an insight into his motives. “Agnes, how old are you?” he asked after a silence in which they kept the path together.
“I am sixteen. I shall be seventeen next spring.”
“And I am twenty-five.”
“That is quite old,” returned Agnes, dubiously. “I shall have been many years married when I am that old, I suppose.”
“Girls do marry young hereabouts, I have noticed. It is the need of homes, and the fact that it is not good for man to be alone. You’ll make a fine woman, I’m thinking.”
Agnes blushed at the unwonted praise. She had more than once been conscious that she was looked upon with critical eyes by this young man, and that it was often to her disadvantage that she appeared to him. If he thought she would make a fine woman, then maybe—She had just parted from Archie, and out of the fullness of her heart she spoke, “Do you think I’d ever make a proper wife for a minister?”