“Is it anent the matter of home?” he queried. “I can do nothing, Peggy. You will have to stay here. We can’t have a rebel come into our lines and then leave, you know.”
“I know,” she answered sorrowfully. “I want to go home, but ’twas not of that I came to speak.”
“Of what then?” he asked.
“Thee lives so well,” she said with a blush at her temerity, “and yet, sir, there is so much waste. Thee could live just as well yet there need be no excess. I wish, Cousin William, that thee would let me look after the household while I am here. I care naught for the pleasurings, and ’twould occupy me until such time as thee would let me go home,” she added a trifle wistfully. “I could not do so well as mother, but yet I do feel that I could manage more thriftily than thy servants.”
“Peggy,” he cried springing to his feet, “I hoped for this. You owe me a great deal, and ’tis as well to begin to pay some of your debt. That is why I brought you here.”
“I owe thee anything?” she asked amazed. “How can that be?”
“Think you that I have forgotten the time spent in your house, my little cousin? Think you that I, an officer in His Majesty’s service, do not resent that I was given in exchange for a dragoon?”
“If thee thinks that I owe thee anything, my cousin, I will be glad to pay it,” said Peggy regarding him with wondering, innocent eyes. “I am sorry thee holds aught against me.”
Colonel Owen had the grace to blush.
“Harriet hath no housewifely tastes,” he said hastily, “and my son shares her extravagant habits. Between them and the necessity of maintaining a position befitting an officer, I am like to come to grief. You are a good little thing, after all, Peggy. And now let me take you about and put you in charge.”