"Oh, is Mr. Logan sick?" asked Marjorie, forgetting other interests. She turned to Francis, forgetting their feud again, in a common and inexcusable curiosity. "Francis! Now we'll know what it really was that ailed him—the nervous spells, you know? I always told you it wasn't fits!"
"How do you know it isn't?" said Francis. "Peggy hasn't said."
"She wouldn't be so interested if it was," said Marjorie triumphantly.
"It takes an old and dear wife to stand that in a man."
They had no business to be deflected from Peggy and her temper by any such consideration; but it was a point which had occupied their letters for a year, off and on, and there had been bets upon it.
"Let me see, I suppose those wagers stand—was it candy, or a Hun helmet?" said Francis.
"Candy," said Marjorie. "But it was really the principle of the thing.
Ask her."
Francis turned back to Peggy, who was becoming angrier and angrier; for when you start forth to rescue any one, it is annoying, even as Logan found it, to have the rescue act as if it were nothing to her whether she was rescued or not.
"Now, what really does ail him, Pegeen?" he asked affectionately. "Did you see him, or don't you know?"
"Of course I saw him—am I not nursing him? And of course I know!
Poor man, the journey up here nearly killed him."
"How? It seemed like a nice journey to me," said Marjorie thoughtlessly.