Yet more and more depressing were Peachy's long silences, her frequent laugh more irritating, since Ambrose could find no reasonable excuse for laughter in the dulness of the interminable May afternoon with nothing to look at but the ground at his feet, or the lacing of leaves overhead, except Peachy, stitching, stitching everlastingly on something so white and weblike that Ambrose felt he too was being sewed in, made prisoner for life.
His long legs twitched, fairly his body ached with his longing to be off, until by and by even the girl was made to realize that things were not going as she had reasonably expected.
"What is it ails you this afternoon, Ambrose?" she asked at last, wistful if he had but known it. "Wasn't there something special you wanted to say to me to-day, else why did you come so out of your regular time?"
"Why had he come?" Barely was Ambrose able to repress another groan. For the life of him he could not now have told what had drawn him that morning to the Red Farm. Whatever desires or emotions had then stirred him were gone, his head was heavy, his blood moved languidly, even the necessary domestic noises of farm life were inexpressibly annoying. Could Peachy ever have spelled romance? Sighing aloud Ambrose put up his hand to wipe fresh moisture from his brow, and then coloured.
"I'm afeard you're ill," the girl continued, suddenly solicitous, and again with a movement that suggested a motherly hen: "You're so quiet and unlike yourself and yet so nervous and wriggly."
Ambrose yawned. "I slep' out last night, so mebbe I'm tired," he confessed unadvisedly; then immediately observed the same expression on Peachy's face that had been brought there by the presence of his muddy boots in her parlour. Her lips had tightened, though her brow was smooth; it was that gentle but awful look of the born manager.
"I knowed you'd been doin' something foolish," she stated calmly. "Anybody else'd remember there is chills and fever out of doors these spring nights. It's the spring that has set in on you; your blood needs thinnin'. I'll get you some sassafras tea." Relieved by Ambrose's revelation, Peachy was for at once starting off, but the young man caught at her skirts.