In Westleydale the beech trees were in golden leaf.  It was green underfoot and on the folding hills.  Overhead it was limitless blue above the uplands; and above the woods, among the golden tree-tops, clear films and lacing veins and brilliant spots of blue.

Majendie felt Peggy’s hand tighten on his hand.  Her little body was trembling with delight.

They found the beech tree under which he and Anne had once sat.  He looked at her.  And she, remembering, half turned her face from him; and, as she stooped and felt for a soft dry place for the child to sit on, she smiled, half unconsciously, a shy and tender smile.

Then he saw, beside her half-turned face, the face of another woman, smiling, shyly and tenderly, another smile; and his heart smote him with the sorrow of his sin.

They sat down, all three, under the beech tree; and Peggy took, first Majendie’s hand, then Anne’s hand, and held them together in her lap.

“Mummy,” said she, “aren’t you glad that daddy came?  It wouldn’t be half so nice without him, would it?”

“No,” said Anne, “it wouldn’t.”

“Mummy, you don’t say that as if you meant it.”

“Oh, Peggy, of course I meant it.”

“Yes, but you didn’t make it sound so.”

“Peggy,” said Majendie, “you’re a terribly observant little person.”

“She’s a little person who sometimes observes all wrong.”

“No, mummy, I don’t.  You never talk to daddy like you talk to me.”

“You’re a little girl, dear, and daddy’s a big grown-up man.”

“That’s not what I mean, though.  You’ve got a grown-up voice for me, too.  I don’t mean your grown-up voice.  I mean, mummy, you talk to daddy as if—­as if you hadn’t known him a very long time.  And you talk to me as if you’d known me—­oh, ever so long. Have you known me longer than you’ve known daddy?”

Majendie gazed with feigned abstraction at the shoulder of the hill visible through the branches of the trees.

“Bless you, sweetheart, I knew daddy long before you were ever thought of.”

“When was I thought of, mummy?”

“I don’t know, darling.”

“Do you know, daddy?”

“Yes, Peggy. I know.  You were thought of here, in this wood, under this tree, on mummy’s birthday, between eight and nine years ago.”

“Who thought of me?”

“Ah, that’s telling.”

“Who thought of me, mummy?”

“Daddy and I, dear.”

“And you forgot, and daddy remembered.”

“Yes.  I’ve got a rather better memory than your mother, dear.”

“You forgot my old birthday, daddy.”

“I haven’t forgotten your mother’s old birthday, though.”

Peggy was thinking.  Her forehead was all wrinkled with the intensity of her thought.

“Mummy—­am I only seven?”

“Only seven, Peggy.”

“Then,” said Peggy, “you did think of me before I was born.  How did you know me before I was born?”