He was looking straight into her honest brown eyes as he spoke. It was hard for him to realize that she was only a child.
"I don't like dark days," Pearl said, thoughtfully, looking away toward the snow-covered Tiger Hills, that lay glimmering in the soft afternoon sunshine.
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Then suddenly Pearl turned and met his gaze, and the colour in her cheeks was not all caused by the bright spring sun as she said, "I think, it is usually pretty fine on the first of March."
* * *
Before Libby Anne had been a week in the tent Mrs. Burrell came to offer consolation and to express her hopes for Libby Anne's recovery. Mrs. Burrell considered herself a very successful sick-visitor. In the kitchen, where she went first, she found Martha preparing a chicken for Libby Anne's dinner.
"It's really too bad for you to have so much to do, Martha," she began, when the greetings were over; "a young girl like you should be getting ready for a home of her own. Living single is all right when you're young, but it's different when you begin to get along in life. There's that young Englishman—, what's his name?—the one that his girl went back on him—he couldn't do better now than take you. I've heard people say so."
"Oh don't!" Martha cried, flushing Martha lacked the saving sense of humour.
Mrs. Burrell did not see the pain in the girl's face, and went on briskly, "I must go in and see Libby Anne and Mrs. Cavers. Of course I think it is very unwise to let every one go in to see the sick, but for a woman like me that has had experience it is different. I'll try to cheer them up, both of them."
"Oh, they're all right," Martha exclaimed in alarm. "They do not need any cheering. Pearl Watson is in the tent just now."
Martha's cheeks were still smarting with the "cheering" that Mrs.
Burrell had just given her, and she trembled for Libby Anne and Mrs.
Cavers.