A gentle stirring seemed to pass through the woods: the birds spoke softly back and forth, a squirrel chattered. Again that cool wind swept over the trees.
"Now, take it this week," the man went on, puffing steadily; "you wouldn't believe the people just about here who've asked for my advice. I usually camp up here for a week or so in the summer—the people who own the property like to have me here—and the first day I unpacked, up comes a nice girl—I used to make birch whistles for her mother—to tell me all about her young man. She brought me that spray of honeysuckle over the pipes—grows over the front gate. She wants to marry him before her father gets to like him, but she hates to run away. 'Would you advise me to, Peter?' she says. And I advised her to wait.
"Then there's my friend the blacksmith. He lives in a queer little house with dormer windows under a hill, just off the county road. He's got a new baby, and he was afraid it wouldn't pull through. He knew I'd seen a lot of babies—black and red and yellow—and he wanted my advice. 'Peter, what'll I do?' he says, 'what'll I do?'
"'Why, just wait, Harvey. He'll live. Just wait,' I told him."
Caroline listened with interest. He might have been talking to his equal in years, from his tone.
"Then, oddly enough," he continued, "here's my old friend in the big house up yonder—and she is old—and what do you think she's worried about? She's afraid she won't die! 'Oh, Peter,' she says to me—she's fond of me because I'm the same age as a little boy of hers that died—'it seems to me that I can't wait, Peter! What shall I do?' she says. And I tell her to wait. 'Dear old friend,' said I to her last night, 'it will come. It's bound to come. Just be patient.'"
He paused and knocked his pipe empty.
"Now, as to your case," he said, "I know how you feel. I'm sorry for you—by the Lord, I'm sorry for you! But what's the use of running away? You'll keep on growing up, you know. It's one of the things that doesn't stop. You can't beat the game by wearing knickers, you know. And then, there'd come a time when you'd want to quit, anyhow."
She shook her head.
"Really, you would," he assured her, persuasively. "They all do."