XIV
The days were packed with enjoyment for Graeme; not less for Miss Penny; nor—illuminated and titillated with a conposed expectancy as to whither all this might be leading her—for Margaret herself.
Graeme took the joyful burden of their proper entertainment entirely on his own shoulders. He reaped in full now the harvest of his lonely wanderings, and compared those former gloomy days with these golden ones with a heart so jubilant that the light of it shone in his eyes and in his face, and made him fairly radiant.
"That young man grows handsomer every day," was Miss Penny's appreciative comment, in the privacy of hair-brushing.
Margaret expressed no opinion.
"I thought him uncommonly good-looking as soon as I set eyes on him, but he's growing upon me. I do hope, for his sake, that I shan't fall in love with him."
And at that a tiny gleam of a smile hovered for a moment in the curves of Margaret's lips, behind the silken screen of her hair.
No trouble was too great for him if it added to their pleasure. He provisioned their expeditions with lavish discrimination. He forgot nothing,—not even the salt. He carried burdens and kindled fires for the boiling of kettles, and saw to their comfort and more, in every possible way. He assisted them up and down steep places, and Margaret's hand grew accustomed to the steady strength of his. She came to look for the helping hand whenever the ways grew difficult. At times she—yes, actually, she caught herself grudging Hennie-Penny what seemed to her too long an appropriation of it.
