"Come on to breakfast now, you young wild animals," said he, his thin, dark face sparkling all over with laughter as Marjorie had never seen it.
"I'm killed entirely," said Peggy. "I have to be taken."
She made herself as limp and heavy as possible, and it ended in a free-for-all scuffle which was finally shepherded into the dining-room by Mrs. O'Mara, who was laughing so herself that she had to stop and catch her breath.
So there was little time to think of one's sad lot at breakfast, either. And Peggy was so keen on the dance proposition that it took all breakfast time to discuss it.
"I'm taking the motor-cycle over to the clearing, and I don't think I'll be back till night," said Francis unexpectedly when breakfast was over.
Peggy made a loud outcry.
"Is this your idea of a honeymoon? Well, when my time comes may I have a kinder man than you! And poor Marjorie sitting home darning your socks, I suppose!"
"No. Not at all. I have to go over first to take some things. When I come back I'll take her, too, if she'd like to go. Think you'd enjoy it, Marjorie?"
"What is it?" she asked cautiously, not particularly willing to implicate herself.
"Well, it's a little cabin—or two little cabins, rather, and a lean-to—several miles away. A motor-cycle can go there by taking its life in its hands. It's in the middle of a clearing, so to speak; but it's also in the middle of a pretty thick patch of woods around the clearing. There's a spring, and a kettle, and we make open fires. There are provisions in the lean-to, locked up so the deer can't get them—yes, deer like things to eat. We go there to stay when there's such work to do that it isn't convenient to come back and forth at night. There are lots of rabbits and birds, and once in a while a harmless little green snake—do you mind harmless snakes, my dear?—comes and looks affectionately at you, finds you're a human being, and goes away again rather disappointed. Once in a long while an old bear comes and sniffs through the cracks of the lean-to in hopes of lunch, and goes away again disconsolately like the snake. But only once since I can remember. I tell you, Marjorie, I don't ever remember having a better time than when I'd built a fire out there in an open spot near the trees, and just lay on the ground with my hands behind my head, all alone, and everything in the whole world so far away that there wasn't a chance of its bothering me! Just trees and sky and wood-smoke and the ground underneath—there's nothing like it in the world!"