"I'll be home before you, Pete, and wait for you," Alix said. She looked at him irresolutely, as if she would have added more, but evidently decided against it and spoke again only in reference to the dog. "Keep Buck with you, will you, Pete?" she said. "He's getting too lazy. No, sir!" she reproached the animal affectionately. "You shall not ride! Well, the dear old Bucky-boy, does he want to come along?"
And she knelt down and put her arms about the animal, and laid her brown cheek against his head.
"You old fool!" she said, shaking him gently to and fro. "You've got to stay with Peter. Old Buck--!" Suddenly she was on her feet and had sprung into her place.
"Hold him, Pete!" she said. "Goodbye, Sis dear! All right, Martin?"
The engine raced; the car slipped smoothly into gear and vanished. Peter and Cherry stood looking at each other.
"Give them a good start, or Buck will catch them," Peter said, his body swaying with the frantic jumping of the straining dog. But to himself he said, with a sense of shock: "Alix knows!"
Buck was off like a rocket when he finally set him free; his feathery tail disappeared between the columns of the redwoods. Without speaking, Cherry and Peter started after him.
"And now that we are alone together," Cherry said, after a few minutes, "there seems to be nothing to say! We've said it all."
"Nothing to say!" Peter echoed. "Alix knows," he said in his heart.
"Whatever we do, it all seems so--wrong!" Cherry said with watering eyes.