Archibald’s voice held a note of alarm.
“Absolutely. I didn’t mean that she looked frail—but she’ll never be the buxom, dashing kind. Her beauty won’t jump at you. It will haunt you. I think that Irish type is the loveliest in the world—the black hair and the deep blue eyes and the clear skin and the flush that comes and goes—and when you add the sweetness of Peg’s mouth and the love in her eyes and the freckles on her impertinent little nose—I rather think those freckles are fading, though. They’ll soon be gone.”
“I’d miss them,” Archibald said regretfully. “And I hope she won’t be a raving, tearing beauty. She’d break her heart because she couldn’t see to all the sighing swains. I’m afraid she is headed that way, though. I’ve noticed it myself—and she’s better than good to look at. She has a way with her.”
He talked lightly; but he didn’t believe that the black-haired, blue-eyed type was the loveliest the world had to show. There was a certain reddish gold hair that was neither brown nor auburn; and there were eyes that were sometimes the color of sea water over sand and sometimes violet and sometimes darkly gray— Still, Pegeen was blooming like a wild rose. There was no doubt about that.
Jimmy noticed it, too. He commented upon it one day when Pegeen and he had left Archibald smoking lazily, after a picnic lunch, and had gone off in search of berries for dessert.
“You’re better looking than you used to be, Peg,” he said, staring critically at her across a blueberry bush from which they were stripping the fruit.
“Uh-huh,” agreed Pegeen. Her mouth being full of berries, she was temporarily incapable of more eloquent assent.
Jimmy felt that he ought to snub her, for her soul’s good; but really—in that pink sun-bonnet— Oh, well girls were funny.
“What are you going to do when Mr. Archibald goes off and gets married?” he asked abruptly.
Pegeen choked over her mouthful of berries and looked at him, in wide-eyed dismay.