Pegeen flushed indignantly.
“Well, I should think not! If that’s all you know about babies! Why, I just go to work and get the poor little thing awfully interested in something else.”
Archibald laughed boyishly.
“Peggy child. That must be the answer. You’re getting me awfully interested in something else.”
“Only you weren’t bad, sir,” protested the small girl, loyally.
A shadow crept over the man’s face.
“Bad enough, Peg—but I might have been worse.”
“Well, you’re good enough for me,” said Peggy, contentedly.
The comforting words rang pleasantly in his ears a half hour later when he plunged into the woods behind the shack and took the trail leading up the steep slope of Pine Knob hill.
The day had been hot for June and the dim cool greenness closed around him deliciously as he made his way through depths of hemlock shadow and gold-decked shallows of birch-filtered light. There was a faint stir of wind in the branches, a rustle of light foot and lighter wing in the hidden places of bough and undergrowth.