"I'll be honest with you. I don't want her to marry you or anybody else. I want to keep her with me; but I'll be square. It will be hands off until she decides for herself. If you will say nothing to her for a year I will say nothing before her against marriage in general, and I've said a great deal in the past. And, moreover, I will wrap my blessing up to-day and hand it out a year hence if you deserve it, even if the handing breaks my heart." She held out her hand. "Is it a bargain?" "I don't know whether it is or not." He interlocked his fingers and looked down on the floor of the porch. The ridges in his forehead stood out heavily, and his teeth bit into his under lip. "It is asking a good deal, and I don't like to make a promise I might not be able to fulfil. A year is a long time. She might need me. Something might happen." "About your only chance. Don't you see she needs something to wake her up? I'm not going to wake her. I want her to sleep on. I'm selfish and don't deny it. But, of course, do as you choose." She waved her fan with a wash-my-hands-of-you air, and settled herself back in her chair. "I've been a fool to talk as I have, perhaps, but I couldn't see a dog hit his tail on a fence and not tell him it was barbed if I knew it and he didn't. Being a man, you must think it over, I suppose, and take a week to find out what a woman could tell you in the wink of an eye. A man's head is no better than a cocoanut where his heart is concerned." "If I should do this," he said, presently, "and anything should happen in which she needed me, and you did not let me know, did not send for me, I--" "Don't be tragic, /mon enfant/. And in the mean time I don't mind telling you she is coming down the street. I wouldn't turn my head, if I were you, though that big hat she's got on, with the wreath of wild roses, is very becoming. She ought always to wear white. She is inside the gate now." His hand was given a quick warm grasp. "Boy--boy--I've been young. If she needs you I will let you know." Chapter XIII A GRATEFUL CONVALESCENT "Ain't it pink and white and whispery to-day?" she said to herself. "The birds are having the best time, and the sun looks like it's singing out loud, it's so bursting bright. 'Tain't hard to love anybody on a day like this." Peggy's thin little fingers played with the spray of roses on her lap, and her big brown eyes roved first in one direction and then the other as she followed the movements of the girl on the lawn cutting fresh flowers for the house; then as the latter came closer she held out a wasted little hand, but drew it back before it was seen.