"I didn't know you went on the principle that you had to act exactly like a regular married woman," he apologized with meekness.
"I do," she said shortly.
He rose and went over to where the banjo lay and brought it back to her. It was growing dusk now in the little cabin.
"Play for me, and sing, won't you, Marjorie?" he asked abruptly. "I haven't heard you for a long time."
In Marjorie's mind there arose the memory of that boyish, loving little note that she had found under the banjo, and for a minute her throat clutched so that she couldn't answer. She had moments of being so intolerably sorry for Francis that it hurt; quite irrational moments, when he seemed to need it not at all. This was one.
"Yes," she said, pulling herself together. "That is, if you will take my word for it that I have no designs on poor old Mr. Pennington."
"Of course I know you haven't," he said. "It was the other way about that I was afraid of."
"His having designs on me?"
She laughed aloud as she began tuning her strings. It did seem like the funniest thing she had ever heard. The picture of Pennington, girt with a sack for an apron, with that plump, quaint face of his, and those kindly, fussy ways, drying cups for her and having designs while he did it—it was enough to make even Logan laugh, and he had never been known to be amused by anything that wasn't intellectual humor.
"Just a-wearyin' for you,"