e dark, I suppose
that's why she weaves so badly," he observed, after a short silence.

"She undoubtedly drops a stitch now and then," I agreed, wondering if
he was thinking of me or Struthers when he spoke. "But you do like me,
don't you?"

"I adore you," admitted Peter quite simply.

"In the face of all these?" I said with a contented little laugh,
nodding toward my three children.

"In the face of everything," asserted Peter.

"Then I wish you'd do something for me," I told him.

"What?"

"Break that woman's heart," I announced, with a backward nod of my
head toward Casa Grande.

"I'd much rather break _yours_," he coolly contended. "Or I'd prefer
knowing I had the power of doing it."

I shook my head. "It can't be done, Peter. And it can't even be
pretended. Imagine the mother of twins trying to flirt with a man even
as nice as you are! It would be as bad as an elephant trying to be
kittenish and about as absurd as one of your dinosauria getting up and
trying to do a two-step. And I'm getting old and prosy, Peter, and if
I pretend to be skittish now and then it's only to mask the fact that
I'm on the shelf, that I've eaten my pie and that before long I'll be
dyeing my hair every other Sunday, the same as Struthers, and----"

"Rot!" interrupted Peter. "All rot!"

"Why rot?" I demanded.

"Because to me you're the embodiment of undying youth," asserted the
troubadour beside me. It was untrue, and it was improper, but for a
moment or two at least my hungry heart closed about that speech the
same as a child's hand closes about a chocolate-drop. Women are made
that way. But I had to keep to the trail.

"Supposing we get back to earth," I suggested.

"What's the matter with the way we were heading?" countered the
quiet-eyed Peter.

"It doesn't seem quite right," I argued. And he laughed a little
wistfully.

"What difference does it make, so long as we're happy?" he inquired.
And I tried to reprove him with a look, but I don't think it quite
carried in the misty starlight.

"I can't say," I told him, "that I approve of your reasoning."

"That's just the point," he said with a slightly more reckless note in
his laughter. "It doesn't pretend to be reasoning. It's more like that
abandoning of all reasoning which brings us our few earthly glories."

"_Cogito, ergo sum_," I announced, remembering my Descartes.

"Well, I'm going to keep on just the same," protested Peter.

"Keep on at what?" I asked.