He looked at her for a nonplused moment, at her brown arms bent over her shaken bosom, at the shield of her broken hat. He was thoroughly discomfited for he had not the least idea what was the matter. Then he shifted the reins to his left hand and edging near her laid his right on her knee.
"Don't you want to marry him?" he said gently.
"It isn't that, it's something else."
"What else? You can say anything you like to me. Ain't I carried you when you were a baby?"
"I don't know what it is." Her voice came cut by sobbing breaths. "I don't understand. It's like being terribly lonesome."
The old frontiersman had no remedy ready for this complaint. He, too, did not understand.
"Don't you marry him if you don't like him," he said. "If you want to tell him so and you're afraid, I'll do it for you."
"I do like him. It's not that."
"Well, then, what's making you cry?"
"Something else, something way down deep that makes everything seem so far away and strange."