been wiping his forehead.

"There ye are!" he said, shrugging. "Cherry goes gaily off with a
man she's only known for a few weeks; Anne dresses up this new
fellow with goodness knows what qualities; and you and Alix here,
neighbours all your lives, laugh as if marriage was all a joke!"

"Our marriage would be, darling," Alix assured him. "But, Dad, if
you would like me to marry Peter, by George, I will!" she added,
dutifully. "Peter, consider yourself betrothed! Bucky," she said
to the dog, "dat's oo new Daddy!"

Neither man paid her the slightest attention. Peter scraped a lump
of dried mud from the calf of his high boots, and the doctor
musingly looked back along the rough trail they had climbed.

"I'd have felt safer--I'd feel very safe to have one of my girls
in your care, Peter," the older man said at last, thoughtfully. "I
hate to see them scatter. Well!"

He sighed, smiled, and got to his feet. "That's not in our hands,"
he said, cheerfully.

Alix, without moving, sent her glance from his face to Peter's,
and their eyes met. Only a few words, spoken half in earnest, on a
spring morning tramp, and yet they had their place, in her memory
and Peter's, and were to return to them after a time, and
influence them more seriously than either the man, or the grinning
girl, or the old man himself ever dreamed.