He pulled her down on the grass and she curled up comfortably beside him; but the subdued mood lasted.
“What’s the matter, Peg?” Archibald asked, as they stood in the doorway of the shack, late that afternoon. He was in his riding clothes and off to Pisgah to have Zip shod; but he stopped to put a finger under Pegeen’s chin and turn her face up to his.
“Something’s wrong, dear. Tell me about it.”
Her long black lashes dropped over her woeful eyes, the wild rose flush came into her cheeks, her lips quivered.
“Why, Peg!”
She hid her face against the front of his riding coat.
“It isn’t anything,” she said with a little sob in her voice. “Honestly, it isn’t anything—only I’ll be so—l-lonesome, when somebody else sees to you.”
For a moment he had a helpless sense of being a bungling man. Then he sat down on the doorstep and pulled her down beside him.
“Now see here, Peg,” he said with simple seriousness. “You are too sensible to spoil our happiness by worrying over things that may never happen or over things that aren’t going to happen for a long time. One of these days you’ll be going away to school. I’m going to attend to that, and then you’ll be growing up and traveling in Europe and going out in society and I’ll need somebody to see to me in the off times when you’re too busy. And then you’ll be falling in love with some fine chap and getting married and you’d feel mighty bad if you had to go off knowing that there wasn’t anybody to see to me properly after you were gone. Now wouldn’t you?”
“Y-y-yess,” faltered Peg. Her eyes were perceptibly more cheerful. The bits about school and Europe had appealed to her imagination.