“I do not know.  I am nervous, I guess,” she answered sadly.

“Nervous?  P-p-pepeeta Aesculapius nervous?  I thought her nerves were m-m-made of steel?  What is the m-m-matter?” he asked, looking at her anxiously.

His gentleness calmed her, and she answered:  “I am sorry to leave a place where I have been so happy.  Oh! why cannot we settle down somewhere and stay?  I get so tired of being always on the wing.  Even the birds have nests to rest in for a little while.  Are we never going to have a home?”

“Nonsense, child!  What do we want with a h-h-home?  It is better to be always on the go.  I want my liberty.  It suits me best to fly through the heavens like a hawk or swim the deep sea like a shark.  A home would be a p-p-prison.  I should tramp back and forth in it like a polar bear in a c-c-cage.”

Pepeeta answered with a sigh.

“Cheer up, child,” he cried in his hearty fashion.  “Your voice sounds like the squeak of a mouse!  B-b-be gay!  Be happy!  How can you be sad on a morning like this?  Look at the play of the muscles under the smooth skins of the horses!  Remember the b-b-bright shining dollars that we coaxed out of the tightly b-b-buttoned breeches pockets of the gray-backed Q-Q-Quakers.  What more do you ask of life?  What else can it g-g-give?”

“It does not make me happy!  I shall never be happy until I have a home,” she said, still sobbing, and trying to conceal the cause of her grief from herself as well as from her husband.

Nothing could have astonished the great, well-fed animal by her side more than this confession.  In all his life he had never heaved a sigh.  His contentment was like that of a lion in a forest full of antelopes.  But if he was fierce and cruel to others, he was at least kind to his mate, and he now put his great paw around her little shoulders and gave her one of his leonine kisses.

“You are as melancholy as an unstrung d-d-drum,” he said.  “I must cheer you up.  How would you like a s-s-song?  What shall it be?  ’Love’s Young D-D-Dream’?  All right.  Here g-g-goes.”

And at the word, he opened his great mouth and stuttered it forth in stentorian tones that went bellowing among the hills like the echoes of thunder.

Pepeeta smiled at his kindness and was grateful for his clumsy efforts at consolation; but they did not dispel her sadness.  Her spirits sank lower and lower.  The light seemed to have faded out of the world, and the streams of joy to have run dry.  She sighed again in spite of herself, and in that sigh exhaled the hope which had sprung from her heart at the prospects of a new and sweet companionship.

She had divined the cause of her disappointment with an unerring instinct.  It was exactly as she thought.  At the last instant, David’s heart had failed him.