"What put that into your head?" he asked, presently, smoking with his eyes fixed upon the valley far below.
"Just--being here," she answered. And as he glanced over his shoulder he met her smile.
"You've been here a thousand times without ever paying me a compliment!" he reminded her.
Cherry considered this, her brows drawn a trifle together.
"Perhaps," she offered, presently, "it's because there are so many changes, Peter; my marriage, Anne's--everything different! It just came to me that it is nice to have this always the same."
"Perhaps Alix will come up here and help keep it so some day," the man said, deliberately. Cherry's look of elaborate surprise and pleasure died before his serious glance. She was silent for a moment.
"Why don't you ask her?" she said in a low, thoughtful tone, trembling, eager to preserve his mood without a false note.
"I have," he answered simply. Cherry's heart jumped with a sudden unexpected emotion. What was it? Not pleasure, not all surprise--surely there could be no jealousy mixed with her feeling for Peter's plans? But she was dazed with the rush of feeling; hurt in some fashion she could not stop to dissect now. Only this morning she had felt that Peter was not good enough for Alix; now, suddenly, he began to seem admirable and dear and unlike everybody else--
"And she said no?" she stammered in confusion.
"She said no. Or, at least, I intimated that I was a lonely old affectionate man with this and that to offer, and she intimated that that wasn't enough. It was all--" he laughed--"It was all extremely sketchy!"