changes, Peter; my marriage, Anne's--everything different! It just
came to me that it is nice to have this always the same."

"Perhaps Alix will come up here and help keep it so some day," the
man said, deliberately. Cherry's look of elaborate surprise and
pleasure died before his serious glance. She was silent for a
moment.

"Why don't you ask her?" she said in a low, thoughtful tone,
trembling, eager to preserve his mood without a false note.

"I have," he answered simply. Cherry's heart jumped with a sudden
unexpected emotion. What was it? Not pleasure, not all surprise--
surely there could be no jealousy mixed with her feeling for
Peter's plans? But she was dazed with the rush of feeling; hurt in
some fashion she could not stop to dissect now. Only this morning
she had felt that Peter was not good enough for Alix; now,
suddenly, he began to seem admirable and dear and unlike everybody
else--

"And she said no?" she stammered in confusion.

"She said no. Or, at least, I intimated that I was a lonely old
affectionate man with this and that to offer, and she intimated
that that wasn't enough. It was all--" he laughed--"It was all
extremely sketchy!"

"Peter, but what does she want?" There was actual sisterly
indignation in Cherry's tone.