"It's all--so--so--sort of new. I--I--feel--I don't know
just how--I think it's homesick."
Her voice broke in a bursting sob. Her control gone, her pride fell
with it. Wheeling on the seat she cast upon him a look of despairing
appeal.
"Oh, Daddy John," was all she could gasp, and then bent her head so
that her hat might hide the shame of her tears.
He looked at her for a nonplused moment, at her brown arms bent over
her shaken bosom, at the shield of her broken hat. He was thoroughly
discomfited for he had not the least idea what was the matter. Then he
shifted the reins to his left hand and edging near her laid his right
on her knee.
"Don't you want to marry him?" he said gently.
"It isn't that, it's something else."
"What else? You can say anything you like to me. Ain't I carried you
when you were a baby?"
"I don't know what it is." Her voice came cut by sobbing breaths. "I
don't understand. It's like being terribly lonesome."
The old frontiersman had no remedy ready for this complaint. He, too,
did not understand.
"Don't you marry him if you don't like him," he said.
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