Page:Barbour--Peggy in the rain.djvu/163

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PEGGY-IN-THE-RAIN



read the story to her as fast as I'd written a page or two, and I remember how excited she got. I think the real reason the story stopped at page forty was because we had our first quarrel then."

"She surely didn't object to being the heroine?"

"Oh, no; what girl would? But I had it arranged that Lady Leona was to marry her old sweetheart, the son of the gamekeeper, who had been to America and who comes back in the third chapter. You see, somebody—I've forgotten who now—was found dead in the copse—or is it coppice?—two years before and the gamekeeper's son was wrongly accused and had to flee. So he comes back in the third chapter so changed that nobody recognizes him. His name—oh, dear, what was his name?"

She gazed frowningly across the table.

"Gordon?" he suggested.

An expression of bewilderment came to her face.

"It was!" she exclaimed. "Gordon Lambert! Now, isn't that the funniest thing? I remember I had the hardest sort of a time finding the right name for him, and finally I came across Gordon,

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