"Why, what has made you think Edna offended?"
Sylvia's lip trembled. "Oh, little things. Tiny things. Things a man would probably not notice. She didn't kiss me good-night last evening."
John feared the speaker was going to cry.
"She didn't me, either," he responded cheerfully. "I didn't think anything of it. I should have been more apt to notice it if she had."
Sylvia gave an April smile. "She didn't kiss me this afternoon. She was strange and unlike herself. She's been so all day. I've been thinking that perhaps I ought not to go back," finished the girl slowly.
"Perish the thought," returned Dunham hastily. He was surprised to find how earnestly he objected to any such desertion. "You must go back if only to set your thought about it straight. Ask"—No, he would not advise her to ask Edna. The latter might tell her frankly. "Edna is very much taken up with her carpentering," he went on. "Let her get over that."
"She has been so very kind to me," said Sylvia. "I want to be sure not to impose on her,—not to be in her way," and she looked so childlike and self-forgetful as she spoke, that her companion, bewildered and flattered as he was by the Look, and the Idea, indulged in a brief and pointed soliloquy:—
"Whether she is a gypsy or a saint, or whatever she is, she's a peach."
Sylvia's eyes grew wistful as the familiar home landmarks came in view.
"There is the Tide Mill," she said half to herself.