“None whatever.”
“Arrah, Tom, ’tis in love ye are entirely!”
At these words, which took him cruelly by surprise, he gave her a kind of wounded glare that was their confirmation, whereupon she forced a giggle, and asked him whom he supposed Nat had suspected him of being in love with.
Tom wearily gave it up.
“Be thinkin’ a minute,” said Peggy self-consciously.
“Not you, was it?”
Peggy nodded.
“But what nonsense!” he exclaimed.
“An’ it was all that,” said Peggy.
“I mean we never saw each other. And was that all he had against me?”
“No; there was a little more than that.”
She hesitated.
“What?” he asked.
“More of his nonsense then, for he thought I was as bad as you.”
“Idiot!”
“Idjut indeed,” said Peggy sadly.
“When we hadn’t exchanged a dozen words!”
Not a dozen? Not many dozens, perhaps; for up to to-night Peggy had them every one by heart. She was not so sure that she would be able to remember all they were saying now; she was not so sure that she should want to. But she steeled herself to answer cheerfully. And he guessed nothing then, for to speak of love was still to think of Claire; and to think of Claire was to pray that never, in this life or another, might she know or dream what had befallen him that day. But even with the prayer in his heart he remembered there was
