'Have you told Prue?' asks Talbot, when he has enough got over the ecstasy of that new morning meeting, to speak connectedly.
'Yes.'
'And what did she say?'
Margaret hesitates a moment.
'She—she was very much upset.'
'Upset!' repeats Talbot, his tone evidencing the revulsion of feeling of one who had imagined that all Creation must be rejoicing with him. 'What was there in it to upset her?'
'She said it was such a surprise; she was not at all prepared for it. In that,' blushing, 'she was like me.'
He is silent. It is a mere speck in his heaven; but he would have liked Prue to have been glad too.
'She said that you are such a stranger,' continues Peggy, looking half-shyly up at him, with a sort of light veil of trouble over her limpid eyes. 'When I come to think of it, so you are; if it were not,' laughing a little, 'that I am always hearing the children call you by it, I should not even know what your Christian name was.'
'A stranger!' repeats Talbot, in a rather dashed voice.