"What is it? Can you not come, after all?" I inquired gravely.
"I've got a drawback," said Miggy, soberly. "A man's in love with me."
She linked her arms before her, a hand on either shoulder—arms whose slenderness amazes me, though at the wrist they taper and in their extreme littleness are yet round. Because of this frailty she has a kind of little girl look which at that moment curiously moved me.
"Who told you that?" I asked abruptly.
"About it being a drawback? Everybody 'most," said Miggy. "They all laugh about us and act like it was a pity."
For a moment I felt a kind of anger as I felt it once when a woman said to me of a wife of many years whose first little child was coming, that she was "in trouble." I own that,—save with my neighbour, and Calliope, and a few more whom I love—here in the village I miss the simple good breeding of the perception that nothing is nobler than the emotions, and the simple good taste of taking seriously love among its young. Taking it seriously, I say. Not, heaven forbid, taking it for granted, as do the cities.
"Other things being equal, I prefer folk who are in love," I told Miggy. Though I observe that I instance a commercialization which I deplore by not insisting on this secretarial qualification to anything like the extent with which I insist on, say, spelling.
Miggy nodded—three little nods which seemed to settle everything.
"Then I'll come," she repeated. "Anyhow, it isn't me that's in love at all. It's Peter. But of course I have to have some of the blame."
So! It was, then, not "all Peter with Miggy." Poor Peter. It must be a terrific problem to be a Peter to such a Miggy. I must have looked "Poor Peter," because the girl's face took on its first smile. Such a smile as it was, brilliant, sparkling, occupying her features instead of informing them.