Pegeen’s day dawned radiantly, a perfect June day of sun-warmed breezes
and drifting, white clouds against an ardent, azure sky, and the small
girl was as radiant as the day.
“I couldn’t sleep for thinking of it,” she said happily, as she brought
in Archibald’s breakfast.
For a moment she was silent, watching as usual with an anxious little
frown while he broke the shell of the two-minute eggs, but when the
ordeal was past and she once more made sure that fire and water had not
betrayed her, she went on talking. Breakfast was always a conversational
interlude at the shack.
“I dreamed a dreadful dream about you getting over to Pittsfield and not
having any money and I cried so it waked me up, and then I got to
thinking maybe it was a warning or something, so I prayed like fury. Mr.
Colby, the minister down in the village, says we oughtn’t to pray for
what we want, that we ought to pray for grace to want what the Lord
thinks best for us to have, but it seems to me that’s a silly way to
pray. When we’ve got a thing we’ve just got to make the best of it and
that’s all there is to it, but I believe in getting to work early and
praying for something it’ll be easy to make the best of. I told God that
if anything horrid _was_ going to happen I wished to goodness He’d stave
it off till after I had my hat, and I think He will.”
“Nothing horrid is going to happen.” Archibald spoke with the assurance
of one who has inside information.
“We are going to have the time of our young lives, Peggy. Never mind the
dishes this morning. You can do them to-morrow.”
She shook her head.
“No, sir, please. That’s a poor way. I’d rather do them. Like as not, if
I didn’t a greasy plate would pop into my mind just when I was trying on
my hat and spoil things. It’s perfectly terrible to have disagreeable
things jump out at you when everything’s pleasant as can be. I’d lots
rather clean up as I go along.”
“What if you can’t wash your dirty dishes, Peg?”
The man’s tone was queer, though he smiled, and the girl, sensitive to
undercurrents, looked up at him quickly.
“Oh, well,” she said and there was a comforting note in her own voice,
“when I simply can’t, I just put them to soak in soapy water and try to
forget them. It’s wonderful how easy they are to do after a little if
you let them soak while you go off and do something else.”
“Yes—I suppose so.” He was evidently doubtful. “Well, we’re not in a
mad rush, so clean up as you go along. It’s a good habit, but I always
seem to have dirty dishes left over. Come down to Neals’ when you are
ready. I’m going to get the horse.”
A half hour later the two drove down the Valley road, while Mrs. Neal
leaned over her front gate to watch them go.
The old buggy was shabby, the old horse was physically and
temperamentally incapable of anything more spirited than a jog-trot; but
Pegeen could not have been prouder, more rapturous, if she had been
taking the road with the coach and four of her dreams.
Her faded blue dress had been washed and starched to aggressive
crispness. Her heavy mop of black curls was tied with the cherished pink
hair ribbons that had been the Smiling Lady’s last Christmas present.
Under the battered old straw hat whose rose-wreathed successor was
waiting in Pittsfield for Pegeen’s coming, the expressive face was all
aflame with excitement and happiness.
Archibald looked down into the dark blue eyes that were well-springs of
bubbling joy, and felt oddly young himself.
“Isn’t it splendid,” the small girl said breathlessly—“going off on an
adventure this way, just you and me in a buggy. I’ve been twice before,
but in a wagon both times. That was nice too, but a buggy’s so much
eleganter. I do hope they’ll all see us. Mrs. Benderby’s washing at the
Pratts’ to-day. I told her we were going to start at nine, so she’ll be
looking out for us and like as not she’s told everybody else, so they’ll
all be watching. Folks here in the Valley are awfully interested in
things and they’ve been sort of excited about my going up to take care
of you. You see they couldn’t tell how it’d turn out, you being from New
York and an artist and not smiling at anybody, and all that, but now
when they see me driving to Pittsfield with you in a buggy and you
looking so jolly and nice, they’ll know that everything’s come out
beautifully. I knew it would all the time ’n’ Miss Moran said:
“ ‘Peg, everybody knows how to smile at the world, but some people are
dreadfully out of practice.’ She said when you found out there were
other folks in the world beside yourself maybe you’d smile at them, and
now you’re beginning to do it. When you get real well acquainted with
everybody here in the Valley, I shouldn’t wonder if you’d simply grin.
There’s Mrs. Ransom and Sally on their side stoop, watching for us!”
She bounced joyously on the hard leather seat and waved both hands
wildly toward two women, who waved answering salutes.
“Mr. Ransom’s a deacon and he won’t let Sally go anywhere except to
church, or have beaux or anything. Don’t you think it’s a shame—and
she’s pretty as a picture too, and all the boys are perfectly crazy
about her. Her mother’s just like a scared little white rabbit—pale
blue eyes and wrinkly little nose and everything. The neighbors say
she’s afraid to breathe and Sally doesn’t stand up to her father because
he takes it out on her mother and Mrs. Ransom’s so afraid. Miss Moran’s
about the only one that dares to go there much, but she isn’t afraid of
anything and Deacon Ransom can’t be perfectly nasty to her. Nobody can.
Why, even Bill Briggs, that drinks so and swears something awful at
everybody, he’s got to be real friendly with Miss Moran. She hurt her
ankle one day climbing a fence down by the back road and Bill Briggs
happened to come along. He wasn’t so very drunk, but anybody else would
have been scared half to death of him. Miss Moran just upped and called
to him:
“ ‘Oh, Mr. Briggs,’ she said, ‘I’m so glad you came along. I’ve hurt
myself and I’ll have to get you to help me home.’ He told folks that he
cussed once or twice from habit, but she looked so nice and friendly and
so glad he was there and so sure he was going to fix things for her,
that he went over and helped her up and took her home—carried her the
last part of the way—and when they got to the house she made him come
in and have dinner and now he’s sobered up some and he works for her a
good deal, but he doesn’t talk hardly at all when he’s around there. He
can’t talk without swearing and he doesn’t like to swear before her, so
you’d most think he was deaf and dumb when he’s working at her place.”
The drive down the Valley was a continuous performance of waving
greetings, and running commentary. Pegeen did not gossip. She simply
overflowed; and Archibald found the people of whom she talked taking
very definite shape in his mind. He felt distinctly interested in pretty
Sally Ransom and profane Bill Briggs and Ginsy Shalloway, the
seamstress, who went around sewing and knew all about everybody, and
Ezra Watts who wasn’t respectable and was suspected of stealing
everything that disappeared.
Really, the country wasn’t the lonely place Archibald had always
believed it to be. It was full of people and of drama. And though the
man had run away from women and men and vowed himself to misanthropic
seclusion, his Valley neighbors seen through Pegeen’s friendly, tolerant
eyes seemed likable folk. Even Ezra Watts, the not respectable, got the
benefit of Peg’s doubt. “It’s handy to have somebody to lay things on,”
she said. “’N’ I guess Ezra gets credit for lots of things he doesn’t
do—like when Mr. Sanderson was sure his saw and auger had been stolen
and then one day old Granny Sanderson had a dream that they were under
the bed springs and sure enough there they were on the cords, where Mr.
Sanderson had left them himself when he’d been fixing the bed. Ezra’s
got a terrier dog, Bingo, that loves him like everything, and Miss Moran
says when Bingo turns his back on Ezra, she’ll believe the man’s as bad
as he’s painted, but not till then. It’s awfully hard for Miss Moran to
believe anybody’s bad, ’n’ I guess mostly they aren’t.”
On the main street of Pisgah, the little village at the end of the
Valley, Pegeen suddenly bounced higher than usual on the buggy seat.
“Oh—please—there’s Jimmy. Oh, do stop, Mr. Archibald.”
A sturdy, barefooted boy sat on the stone wall under a spreading maple
tree, whittling nonchalantly and with an air of profound indifference to
passersby.
“Jimmy,” called Pegeen eagerly, “Jimmy Dawes.”
The boy looked up from his whittling, showing two merry brown eyes and a
most engaging grin.
“’Lo,” he conceded, trying to look as if he had not been watching for
Pegeen’s triumphal progress.
She leaned out from the buggy, glowing, eager, sure of sympathy, in
spite of the apparent lack of enthusiasm.
“I’m going to Pittsfield, Jimmy. I’m going to have a new hat—with pink
roses!”
Jimmy Dawes’ eyes sought Archibald’s.
“Ain’t girls the limit?” he said genially, as man to brother man.
But Pegeen refused to be suppressed.
“’N’ a new dress ’n’ shoes!” she confided happily.
Jimmy, having asserted the superiority of his sex, like many a male
creature before him, felt that he could afford to humor the inferior
feminine.
“That’s great!” he said with warm friendliness. “You’ll look fine.”
Pegeen beamed upon him. “I knew you’d be glad,” she said. “This is Mr.
Archibald, Jimmy. I’m seeing to him.”
The grin on the boy’s face widened to show more of his white teeth.
There was something refreshingly wholesome about the soundness and
whiteness of those teeth, the amplitude of the grin, the clear frankness
of the eyes, the tanned ruddiness of the skin, the sturdiness of his two
brown legs.
“I guess you’ll get seen to all right, if Peg’s on the job,” he said.
“Come down and see us, Jimmy,” urged Pegeen.
“Yes, do. Come down and go fishing with me,” added Archibald, and then
wondered at himself for having said it. He had never cared for small
boys—nor for small girls. Come to think of it, he had never really
known any.
“All right. I’ll show you some dandy pools.” Jimmy’s acceptance was
prompt and blithe. He was used to comradeship and confident that Peg
wouldn’t vouch for an undesirable.
“He’s the nicest boy,” Archibald’s companion explained as they drove
away. “Mostly they pester, you know, but Jimmy doesn’t. He treats you as
if you were another boy ’n’ when you can’t do things, he sort of
pretends it’s because you don’t want to ’n’ the other boys don’t dare be
horrid when he’s around ’cause he can do most everything better than
they can, and he licked every single one of them—when he first came. He
said he didn’t do it because he was mad, but just to show them and get
it over.”
“He hasn’t always lived here then?” asked Archibald.
“Oh, no. He just stays with his grandfather and grandmother. His father
married again down in New York ’n’ I guess Jimmy missed his mother ’n’
then his father didn’t think cities were good for boys, ’n’ old Mrs.
Dawes adores Jimmy, ’n’ so he’s going to live here for awhile. Mr.
Colby—the minister, you know—teaches him queer things like Latin and
algebra ’n’ some day he’ll have to go away and be educated and rich.”
Her lips drooped woefully at the thought—but reassurances came quickly.
“He says he’s such an awful dub at Latin that he won’t be ready for
college for years ’n’ years. That’s lucky anyway.”
The road left the Valley behind and climbed skyward between lines of
wonderfully built stone walls that had little in common with the
vagabond, straggling stone heaps that marked property confines in the
Valley. Behind the walls orchards clung to the sloping hillsides—old
orchards that gave evidences of early care and training but were lapsing
from grace in their latter days. They had not been able to live up to
the walls that enclosed them, yet the broad spreading trees had a
dignity of their own. They were decaying but they had given bountifully
in their day. One felt that.
“The men who built these walls were in earnest,” Archibald said
reflectively as he eyed the width and height of them, their perfect
alignment, their broad level tops.
Pegeen nodded.
“Shakers,” she explained. “I guess they’re always awfully in earnest,
only they used to build fences ’n’ now they mostly pray. You see there
don’t seem to be many men with them now and women have got to pray when
they’re in earnest. They can’t build walls.”
“That may be one way of building walls.”
She saw what he meant. Pegeen usually saw what people meant. That was
one reason she was such a comforting small person.
“Yes, I know, but it’s sort of nice to leave walls standing up to show
for years ’n’ years. Women bake ’n’ scrub ’n’ wash dishes ’n’ the next
day it’s all gone and has to be done over again. The Shaker women are
working like sixty and they’re perfectly splendid at praying, but the
farms are running down. I do think it’s sort of discouraging being a
woman—but I like it.”
“Bless your heart!” There was a tenderness for more than the child in
Archibald’s eyes as he looked down into the sensitive, glowing face—a
sudden tenderness for all the dear women who found their womanhood
discouraging, yet gloried in it.
Faces looked out through the shining windows of the great brick
buildings as the man and girl drove through the Shaker village—sweet,
kindly faces that smiled in return to Pegeen’s waving hand.
“They’re such dears,” she said enthusiastically. “They wanted me to come
up here when I didn’t have anybody, but I’d rather come sometimes for a
little while and then go away where the folks aren’t so holy and clean
all the time. I love them to death and it’s terribly noble to go off and
not get married and wear scoop bonnets and keep your floors as white as
chalk, but I guess I’m not noble inside—’n’ anyway, if all the women
went off and were holy and clean who’d see to the dirty and unholy
folks?”
“Peggy,” said Archibald, earnestly, urgently, “if you should ever feel
an attack of cleanly holiness coming on—the noble kind—fight it off.
Take something for it. We unholy dirty sinners need you.”
“Don’t worry.” Pegeen’s tone was reassuring. “I’m not going to wear a
scoop bonnet—not while there are hats with pink roses on them—but the
Shakers are darlings all the same. Miss Moran just loves them.”
“She’s a very loving person.” There was an edge of criticism in his
voice.
Pegeen thought it over.
“Yes, she is,” she admitted finally. “She loves most anybody—but then
there are a few she loves _especially_ and that’s quite different. It’s
like being loved by a foreign missionary and being loved by your mother,
you know. I’d lots rather be loved because I was nice than because I was
a human soul, wouldn’t you?”
“I would,” assented Archibald with fervor.
When Susy, the Neal horse, had been intrusted to the tender care of a
livery stable hostler in Pittsfield and the two whom she had brought
from over the hills turned their faces toward Ranson and Kirby’s Dry
Goods Emporium, Pegeen’s feet absolutely refused to conduct themselves
sedately. Skip they would, in spite of all of her ideas of seemly
behavior. Four sedate steps and then a skip was the final compromise,
and in order to achieve that Peg had to anchor to something substantial.
She slipped a small brown hand into her companion’s large one and looked
up at him with dancing eyes.
“If I don’t hold on to something, I’ll go up like a balloon,” she
confided. “I don’t feel as if I weighed anything—especially my feet ’n’
my heart.”
Archibald squeezed the small hand tightly.
“Miss Pegeen O’Neill, if you should let your feet float up and your head
thump down, I should consider you a Young Person unfit to be trusted
with a hat trimmed in pink roses.”
She chuckled gaily.
“But think of the chance the new shoes and stockings would have,” she
urged. “I guess I can stay down though, if you don’t let go.”
So they went into the shop hand in hand. Salesfolk and customers looked
at the pair—and looked again, and smiled—kindly smiles, touched with
curiosity. The two were so oddly mated—the tall lean man with his
clean-cut, homely, clever face, his air of authority, his loose-hanging,
irreproachably-cut, well-worn tweeds, the slim shabby little girl with
happiness flooding her eyes, dimpling her cheeks, playing over her lips.
“Ain’t she a good feeler though!” a blonde at the ribbon counter
remarked to the girl next to her. “Makes you ache to see anybody as
pleased with things as all that.”
“I c’d be sort of pleased with his Nibs myself,” admitted the friend.
“Nobody’s pretty boy but kind of mannish and looks as if he had the
price, and c’d be parted from it if he felt good and like it. Guess he’s
feelin’ like it all right too. Wonder who they are? The kid’s in right.
Anybody c’n see that!”
Archibald, still holding Pegeen’s hand, appealed to a stately and suave
floorwalker.
“I want to do some shopping for this young lady,” he explained—“a good
deal of shopping, and I’m hopelessly incapable. Now you must have some
woman about the place who could take us in hand—sort of advisory
committee, pilot, first-aid rôle, some one with good sense and good
taste. We’re strong on taste ourselves but we’re not so sure of our
sense, eh, Peg?”
She beamed up at him and then transferred the beam to the floorwalker
who melted into a semblance of human interest and enthusiasm.
“Our Miss Carter’s just what you need,” he said. “I’ll send for her.
She’ll be invaluable. I’d go with you myself, only duty—and of course a
woman—”
“Exactly,” agreed Archibald.
Our Miss Carter materialized as a plump little woman with a firm chin, a
pleasant voice, and kindly brown eyes behind eyeglasses. She understood
the situation at once, without fuss, without debate. Archibald gave her
Miss Moran’s list and she read it gravely.
“The hat and the parasol seem to be the most important things,” she said
without hesitation. “Suppose we get them first.”
Pegeen’s hand squeezed Archibald’s ecstatically. Here was a sensible,
intelligent person with a sense of values.
The pink roses were not “large pink roses” after all. Not that a heavily
marcelled and enameled daughter of Israel, under Miss Carter’s stimulus,
did not show the shoppers an uncommonly fine line of enormous pink
roses. She was unflagging in her efforts. She called Pegeen “my dear”
from the start and after the first few hats, bestowed an occasional “my
dear” upon Archibald, in her fine glow of friendly feeling; but there
was a certain mushroom-brimmed little hat, faced in pink and wreathed in
wild roses, to which Pegeen lost her heart utterly, irrevocably, at
first sight.
“They’re so darling and Valleyish,” she explained to Archibald, and he
understood what she meant. Moreover, the piquant little face and the
wild-rose hat rimed in a way to satisfy his artist soul and to
strengthen his growing conviction that Pegeen was headed toward beauty
and already well on the way. The parasol was easily chosen—a pink one
to match the hat—but on the subject of frocks, there was serious
debate. Archibald centered his affections upon a pink linen that Miss
Carter considered impracticable from the point of view of laundering.
“Of course if she could afford to have a great many,” she began. The
artist waved the laundry problem aside.
“We will take the pink one,” he announced firmly, and Pegeen heaved a
sigh of satisfaction, though she had nobly sided with the advisory
committee on the subject of laundering.
“And a couple of white things,” said Archibald,—“and then be as
practical as you please, so long as practical doesn’t mean ugly.” There
were ten frocks in the pile when they called a halt and Pegeen’s
astonished eyes were so widely, darkly blue that they seemed to fill
most of her face. “Now a coat and raincoat,” prompted the Fairy
Godfather,—and when the coats were chosen, he felt in his pockets for
his pipe.
“I’m through,” he said,—“you can run the rest of the show, on your own,
Miss Carter. There’s the list, and you know what a girl her age ought to
have. Get her shoes big enough and buy her everything she needs. Then I
want you to take her somewhere and put her into the pink outfit—whole
business; I’ll be out in front when you get through.”
An hour later, as he sat on a nail-keg in front of the hardware store
next door, a vision appeared to him—a vision in pink—a vision of youth
incarnate, all smiles and blushes, and tremulous hope, and
heart-clutching fear.
Slowly, she turned round before him, once—twice. Then she stood still
and looked at him anxiously from under the rose-wreathed new hat.
“Do you like me?” she asked, her voice high and wobbly from excitement.
“Ye gods!” he murmured feebly. “Is this the young person who is seeing
to me?”
“Yes, sir,” she assured him hastily. “She’s got work clothes too, but
she’s adventuring to-day.”
“My dear,” said Archibald, half seriously, “in a few years, it will be a
very perilous adventure to look as pretty as all that.”
They went in to pay the bill and to thank Miss Carter, who tried in vain
to look as though she had not been watching them through the window and
as though she were not consumed by curiosity about them. Then they
strolled away down Main Street and once more the little brown hand
slipped into the big brown one.
“I don’t feel so skippy,” Pegeen explained, “but my throat’s funny and
I’ve got to squeeze something. I wish I had the Johnston twins here.
They are so fat and soft and nice to hug.”
At the hotel where the two lunched, they apparently created a ripple in
the summer crowd’s sea of dullness. Even the dowagers and spinsters
knitting on the long verandas looked interested and dropped a stitch or
two as the apparition in pink lilted past them; and when Pegeen, seated
at a table in the big dining-room smiled shyly, radiantly, confidingly,
at the world from under the brim of the rose-wreathed hat, the world
smiled back at her without reservation. It was as though the spirit of
eternal youth had passed that way and set even the most scarred
world-worn hearts beating to forgotten tunes.
The child’s eyes were like stars, her cheeks were pinker than her dainty
frock. Happiness—unalloyed, effervescent, illimitable happiness
enveloped her from the most aspiring tendril of the wild rose wreath to
the toe-tips of the shining new shoes. And when she looked across the
table at the Fairy Godfather in prosaic tweed, adoration elbowed rapture
in the look.
“I’ve got my legs twisted around the table leg, so I can’t float up,”
she told him, leaning forward and speaking in confidential tones, out of
consideration for the waiter, “but I wouldn’t be a mite surprised if
something would go bang, and I’d wake up at Mrs. Benderby’s in my old
blue gingham and find out that I’d been dreaming you and the hat and
everything.”
She behaved very prettily in spite of her excitement. Watching her,
Archibald found himself thinking of what Mrs. Neal had said about the
frail, proud, little mother whom love and life had broken. The hint of
race and breeding in Pegeen’s face must have come from her—the dainty
ways of the child too. There was no awkwardness about the small girl’s
manner though this was her first introduction to a hotel menu, a
waiter’s service, a crowd’s scrutiny. Archibald had wondered often at
the purity of her speech, which for all its childish inconsequence held
none of the vulgarisms of the untrained, and now he realized that her
table manners, like her grammar, must have had early and thorough
attention. Poor little mother, how she would love the child now! How she
must have loved the father of the child when she tossed her own world
aside for him!
“You’re looking sorry!” said the girl across the table from him. She was
amazed—reproachful. How was it possible for any one to be sorry on such
a day!
“I was being sorry for all the fairy god-fathers whose godchildren
aren’t exactly like you, Peggy,” the man explained, and she forgave him.
The drive home was quieter than that of the morning. Pegeen was as happy
as she had been, but between the happiness of anticipation and the
happiness of content, the heart travels far. She was satisfied now to
lean against the shabby, leather-covered back of the buggy-seat and
watch the shadows lengthen across the meadows and steal silently up
towards the sun-gilded hilltops.
Once in a while she looked up at Archibald to see if he was contented
too. Their eyes met and then they went back to their thoughts and
dreams. There were snatches of talk, flung out from Pegeen’s drifting
thoughts. She wondered why pink was the happiest color and she wondered
whether the black sheep in a flock was proud or ashamed, and she thought
the father birds must teach the baby birds to fly because it would give
mother birds nervous prostration to do it, and she guessed God didn’t
give you any credit for loving all his works when you were very happy
because it was easy as rolling off a log, and she was quite sure that
people who lived in white houses were happier than people who lived in
gray houses, and she was afraid Miss Moran would think they’d spent too
much money.
“She’s coming up to see things just as soon as we get home. She promised
she would. Maybe she’ll be there when we get there. We’re driving so
slowly and I told her we’d surely be home before six.”
“Why bless my soul, Peg, are we fixed for visitors?” Archibald’s tone
held consternation, but Pegeen treated his doubt with scorn.
“Everything’s as clean as can be, and fresh flowers and a fire laid, and
I told her the key would be under the loose brick, if anything kept us
and she got there first.”
It occurred to the man that there would be something extremely agreeable
about finding the Smiling Lady waiting in the shack when evening brought
him home. He was reconciled to the leisureliness of Susy’s ambling gait,
but Pegeen insisted upon speed. She was afraid that it wouldn’t be light
enough for everybody to see her hat and dress, unless they hurried.
“Of course they’d see it afterwards,” she admitted, “but they’ll be
watching and it would be nice for them to talk about this evening—’n’
then I promised Jimmy.”
So Susy was urged to do her best and the sun was still shining on the
Valley when the returning adventurers turned into Pisgah’s main street
and encountered Jimmy Dawes, still barefoot but painfully scoured and
elegant in a clean shirt and flaming red tie.
Archibald stopped without orders and Pegeen stood up in the buggy to
give her friend the full benefit of her glory. She even raised the pink
parasol to add to the scenic effect.
“Well, by Jingo, would you have thought it!”. Jimmy’s amazement was most
satisfactory. “Ain’t she a peach?” he asked Archibald with that awed
bewilderment with which the masculine always regards feminine
metamorphoses. “Why, Peg, you’re getting good-looking.”
“I’ve got,” said Pegeen, with no undue elation but with deep conviction.
There had been mirrors in Ranson and Kirby’s Emporium and she had
consulted them without prejudice.
“Of course I’m not going to wear these all the time, but I’m not bad
even in the dark gingham ones,” she asserted tranquilly.
“Well, don’t get stuck on yourself, that’s all,” counseled Jimmy.
“Gracious, no. It’s only the clothes,” she explained. “I’m not any
different.”
The Valley was provided with something to talk about that evening. The
fading sunlight rallied and glowed upon the pink frock and the roses, as
Pegeen made her triumphal journey along the white road. An astonishing
number of the Valley folk happened to be leaning over front gates or
sitting on front stoops or standing in front doorways. Peggy waved her
pink parasol at all and to those who came down to the gates, she called
gay greetings and snatches of information about the wonderful happenings
of the day.
“If it wasn’t so late, we’d stop and tell them all about everything,”
she said to Archibald. “It seems almost mean not to. They’d enjoy it so
much, but anyway they’ve seen this dress and my hat and parasol, and
that’s a lot. Ginsy Shalloway could talk about that much for weeks ’n’
weeks. Maybe it’s nicer for them to have things spread out and not know
about the other clothes and dinner at the hotel and the floorwalker and
Miss Carter and everything all at once. I’m going to tell Miss Moran
every single thing, though. I feel as if I’d have to tell it all to
somebody this very night or I’d explode, and she’s the nicest person
possible to tell things to. She always understands exactly how
everything was and how you felt and what you thought. You don’t have to
explain a bit—just tell her things as fast as ever you can ’n’ she
keeps up. Don’t you think the nicest people in the world are the people
you don’t have to explain to?”
“I don’t know but what you are right,”—Archibald thought it over. “Yes;
I’m sure you’re right, Peg. It’s a great thing to have any one
understand when you do explain; and if somebody understands without
having to explain—yes; you’re undoubtedly right.”
“Well, Miss Moran’s like that. You tell her a word or two and she knows
the rest. That’s why she gets on with all kinds of people the way she
does.”
Mrs. Neal was at the gate when Susy stopped before it, and Mr. Neal,
thin, leathery, solemn mannered but twinkling eyed, rose from a chair on
the porch and strolled out to take the horse.
“Land’s sakes, Peg, you’re a treat!”—Mrs. Neal’s fat face was radiant
with delight. “Talk about fine feathers! Why, that’s as tasty a hat as I
ever saw, and as sweet a face under it, I don’t care where the next
comes from.”
Pegeen opened her parasol and turned round and round excitedly before
her admirer.
“’N’ there’s more in boxes,” she announced. “Heaps—’n’ there was
strawberry ice cream ’n’ finger bowls ’n’—We’ve got to go, Miss
Moran’ll be there, but just as soon as I get my breakfast dishes washed
I’ll run down ’n’ tell you all about everything. Oh, Mrs. Neal, it was
perfectly grand. It was better ’n the measles—only, of course I love
Miss Moran best. Anyway I love her just as well. Seems as if I could
love anybody though, when I’ve got this hat and dress ’n’ parasol. I’m
sorry I ever said Benny Crocker was a nasty little toad. He isn’t
really, ’n’ anyway toads are kind of cunning.”
“I guess all the unloving things you ever said wouldn’t make much of a
spot on your pink outfit,”—Mrs. Neal chuckled reassuringly—“and, if
you ask me, it’s the toad you wasn’t fair to when you compared that
Crocker imp to it. I’m partial to toads myself. They’re my best help in
the garden.”
“Good night.” Pegeen stretched two thin arms up, slipped them round the
neck of the woman who stooped to her, and kissed the broad expanse of
cheek. “Maybe you don’t like kissing,” she said apologetically, “but I
couldn’t help it. I hope I won’t meet anybody I oughtn’t to kiss
to-night, ’cause, like as not, I’d up and do it anyway. Good night, Mr.
Neal.”
She gave Susy a love pat.
“You won’t ever be a plain farmhorse any more, Susy,” she said. “You’ve
been part of an adventure.”
“Like’s not she’ll be too upity to plow at all,” drawled Mr. Neal.
“She’ll plow lots better,”—Pegeen was sure of it “She’ll have something
to remember and something to look forward to—’cause anything that’s
happened once could happen again. Things like plowing and washing dishes
are fun if something has happened and something’s going to happen. Good
night, everybody. I s’pose I don’t really need my parasol open but I do
love to carry it that way.”
She and Archibald went away up the meadow path, arms full of packages,
hearts full of content. It had been a good day.
Mrs. Neal listened to the happy, excited voice of the small girl as it
floated back to her on the still evening air.
“Well, Pa,” she said, with smiling satisfaction, “looks as if that
child’s guardian angel’d sat up at last and took notice.”
There were lights in the shack. Archibald and Peggy saw them as soon as
they turned into the meadow.
“She’s there!” the child cried happily. “I knew she’d wait. She’s
splendid about promises. My, isn’t it good to come home!”
To Archibald’s astonishment, it _was_ good to come home. He could not
remember ever having had the feeling before. Involuntarily he quickened
his steps. The end of a happy day and some one waiting, and the lights
of home.
Pegeen ran on ahead, with a shrill shout of greeting, and suddenly a
girl’s figure stood in the doorway, silhouetted grayly ’twixt twilight
and lamplight.
“Welcome, wanderers!” cried a gay voice.
Pegeen was caught in strong, young arms, hugged, kissed, questioned, all
in a breath.
“Was it perfect, Peggy? Not a cloud? Such a duck of a frock, dear! And
the hat! _Oh, sweet!_ The very hat of hats for you. Darling wee roses
and a heavenly pink, and so becoming! Peg, I must hug you again. I
really must.”
Pegeen returned the embrace fervently.
“There isn’t anything like hugging when you feel all bouncy inside,” she
said. “I most did it to Susy.”
“I’ve been overlooked,”—Archibald’s voice was mournful, and the child,
all contrition, flew at him and turned a glowing flower face up for his
kiss.
“I wanted to, something _awful_,” she acknowledged shamelessly, “but I
didn’t dare.” Then she kissed Ellen rapturously, while a young woman in
an enveloping bib apron ducked a respectful courtesy to Archibald.
“Ellen and I hope we’ll suit, sir,” she said demurely. “Miss Pegeen
O’Neill’s our riference. I’m sure she’d be sayin’ a good wur’rd for us,
the way that you’d not be worryin’ over our bein’ alone with your
spoons,—though it’s few spoons we’ve found, to be sure.”
The brogue was rich as cream. The eyes were a bit confusing, the dimples
bereft the man of speech, and the apron—was ever a feminine garment so
bewitching as an apron!
“You’ve been getting supper for us?” Archibald stammered at last.
“We have that—” She was all sweet apology. “Ellen and I’ve been taking
liberties. It was Peggy’s big day, you know. We couldn’t let her come
home and do her work as though it were an ordinary evening, so we put up
a basket of supper—and we’ve cooked some biscuits in your oven—and
you’ll forgive us, won’t you? Sure, you’ve had a whole day of playing
Fairy Godfather. You couldn’t grudge us our wee bit offering at the
quiet end of the day.”
There was nothing he could have grudged her when she looked at him like
that. ’Twas not in the heart of man to deal grudgingly with the Smiling
Lady.
“If you please, miss, the biscuits will be overdone,” warned Ellen, and,
a moment later, Archibald was looking across the table into a face
bewilderingly sweet, while Pegeen, still wearing her beloved hat, though
she had reluctantly furled the pink parasol, sat between her two best
beloveds and beamed impartially, first on one and then on the other.
“Let’s say grace,” she urged. “It’s the graciest supper I ever had ’n’
it seems as if we ought.”
Archibald looked aghast; but the Smiling Lady took the suggestion as a
good one.
“Dear God,” she said,—and she spoke casually, as friend to very present
friend—“make us all very happy and very loving and very grateful on big
days and little days.”
“’Specially little days, ’cause we can do it ourselves on big days,”
amended Pegeen, as she reached for a biscuit.
V
Mrs. Neal saved Pegeen the trouble of keeping her promise to run down
and tell her all about the day in Pittsfield.
The breakfast dishes were washed at the shack, but Pegeen was busily
tidying the living-room, and Archibald was only half-way through his
after-breakfast smoke when the bulky form of their neighbor appeared in
the doorway.
“My soul,” she commented cheerfully. “You folks don’t keep country
hours, do you? Pa and I had breakfast pretty nigh three hours ago. I
might ’a’ known you’d be backwards if I’d stopped to think; but, you
see, I’d got through all my chores and it seemed as if the heft of the
morning was over, so I just ran along up to see Peg’s new clothes. I
allowed the pile was too big for her to bring down to me. I’m some big
myself but I c’n navigate handier than a lot of boxes and bundles can.
You said you was coming down this morning to tell me all about
everything, Peg, but I thought I could see and hear at the same time.
Don’t want to bother you, though. Maybe I’d rather come up later.”
Archibald uttered a prompt protest.
“You’re not bothering anybody, Mrs. Neal. We’re lazy but hospitable. At
least I’m lazy. Peggy’s not; but she’s an indulgent person, so she
doesn’t insist on ramping around very early in the mornings. It isn’t as
if I were farming, you know. I can get at my painting any time I feel
like it, and when I don’t feel like it I don’t do good painting; so
there you are! No merit in my getting up with the early bird; my own
special worm wouldn’t be out.”
Mrs. Neal settled into the chair he had pushed forward to her and
chuckled comfortably.
“Sort of a lazy man’s job, ain’t it?” she said; “but it takes all sorts
of work to keep the world moving and everybody happy. I guess there’s
folks in the cities that like your kind of pictures. They look sort of
daubed up and queer to me, though. Sitting over here, that one on the
painting stand by the window don’t look like anything at all but a mess
of greens.”
Pegeen turned indignant eyes upon the art critic.
“Why, Mrs. Neal! That’s a piece of the woods above Baker’s Spring, ’n’
it’s perfectly lovely. I can most smell the woodsy things growing.”
“Smell nothing!—without its turpentine!” Mrs. Neal was genial but firm
in her opinion. “You ain’t got a call to be mad, Peg. Mr. Archibald
don’t care. Didn’t I say there was folks that’d like his kind of
pictures? I ain’t educated. That’s what’s the matter with me, and I know
it, but there’s no use pretending I don’t like my pictures plain and
clear and neat. You ain’t so awful educated either, but you’re
different. You’ve got imagination to look with. I’ve only got
far-sighted specs—and that young eye doctor over at Pittsfield made a
bad guess on them too.”
“Fire away, Mrs. Neal,” laughed the painter. “I’ve known other people
who didn’t like my pictures. Some day I’ll paint you a nice, clear, tidy
one of your house and garden. I really can, you know.”
The visitor’s broad face beamed delight.
“Say, will you? That’d be fine. Pa and I’d be tickled most to
death—when the flowers along the front walk get going real good, you
know—and maybe Pa and me on the front porch!”
“Anything you say.”
“Well, you’re real kind. I guess Peg’s had you sized up right along, but
it don’t take much to be nice to Peg. When it comes to being nice to a
fat old party like me, you’re proving something. Say, were you figuring
to go off painting somewheres this mornin’?”
Archibald blinked, looked at her thoughtfully, and grinned.
“I can,” he said amiably.
“Oh, don’t you do it, unless you were going anyway, but you most always
do and so they thought it’d be all right and wouldn’t bother you and—”
“Where are they?” Archibald asked comprehendingly.
“Well, they’re sort of waiting around down at my house. I was to wave a
towel or something if you were gone. We didn’t any of us realize about
you not getting up early, and everybody was crazy to see Peg’s dresses
and things. Ginsy Shalloway’s curiosity was boiling so hard when I left
that it most moved her false front up and down like a kettle cover. She
took a mornin’ off from Mrs. Frisbie so as to come down here, but it
don’t make much difference, for Mrs. Frisbie was coming anyway.”
“Save the false front, Mrs. Neal,” Archibald urged. “I’ll take myself
out of the way and Peggy will lend you a towel to wave.”
Mrs. Neal smiled at him in friendly fashion.
“They’d all like first rate to meet you some other time,” she said,
“but, seein’ it’s about clothes and all, I guess things ’ud be freer and
easier without you this mornin’. My apron’ll do to wave, Peg.”
As Archibald climbed the wood trail behind the shack, he looked through
an opening in the leafiness and counted eight feminine figures filing
out of the Neals’ side gate and taking the meadow path.
He laughed, as he stood holding the branches aside, but there was a
pleasant warmth at his heart. Neighbors of his!
He was still feeling neighborly when an hour or two later he wandered
down the western slope of Pine Knob and found himself confronted by the
bars beyond which a crooked lane led through the land of the Smiling
Lady to the white farmhouse under the maples. He glanced at the sun,
then looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock. Time enough for an hour’s
neighboring and a stroll around by the road to his one o’clock dinner.
Morning calls were informal but they seemed to be the accepted thing in
the Happy Valley, and the Smiling Lady would send him away quite frankly
and amiably if he was in the way. He felt sure of that. She would never
allow a man to make a nuisance of himself.
He found her in the vegetable garden and she waved a trowel at him in a
fashion that left no doubt as to his welcome.
“Heaven Sent One!” she hailed, coming toward the fence to meet him. “I
prayed for a man—an able-bodied, obliging man, and behold! I had set my
heart on a morning’s gardening and John had to take the horse to the
blacksmith. It was absolutely necessary. He explained it all to me very
clearly. As a matter of fact, John hates gardening as the devil hates
holy water. He’ll commit any of the venial sins to escape it. I
telephoned for Bill Briggs but he’s been away for two days, so even if I
could put a hand on him he wouldn’t be garden-worthy. The last time he
pulled up all my young spinach and transplanted a lot of very superior
plantain into the lettuce bed—but he gave me a day’s work for nothing
afterward. Bill’s ‘overtaken’ sometimes. He admits it, but he’s a
gentleman. Can you dig?”
The wind had ruffled her hair into wild disorder. The hand that held the
trowel was grubby. The other hand was grubbier. There was a broad streak
of dirt across one cheek and a smudge on her forehead. Her short blue
denim skirt was caked with earth at the knees. A shockingly untidy young
woman, but, as she stood in the sunlight, laughing, Archibald could have
shouted for joy in the free glad life of her. It was good just to be in
the world with anything so young and brave and gay—and so lovely. Yes;
even when wind and gardening had done their worst, so very lovely. Where
was the man who could refuse to dig for her?
“Lead me to a spade,” he urged valiantly.
Two hours later, Ellen coming out in the garden to announce dinner,
found two dirty, tired, but cheerful beings scrambling across freshly
pulverized earth on all fours.
“The saints preserve us!” she exclaimed piously.
“They will, Ellen. That’s their job! But I’m putting in beets and Mr.
Archibald’s planting beans.”
The Smiling Lady sat back on her heels, pushed back her hair with a
grimy hand, and looked up into the disapproving face of the scandalized
personage in spotless blue chambray and white apron and cap.
“You can’t think what a success Mr. Archibald’s been.”
The man at the other end of the garden looked up and grinned his
gratitude for the testimonial, then went back to his absorbing task.
“He’s wasted on painting, Ellen,” the girl went on gaily. “When you
bring artistic genius to bear on a vegetable garden, you’re getting
somewhere; but pictures—Pouff! Who eats pictures? He’s strong, too—and
willing—and very industrious. I don’t see but what our gardening
problem is solved for this summer.”
“If you could be seein’ yourself, Miss Nora!”
Ellen’s voice was dripping with disapproval.
“But I can’t. That’s the beauty of it. And when I go up to make myself
tidy, I sha’n’t look in the mirror until after I’ve washed—so I’ll
never know the worst—and gardening’s no fun at all if one keeps clean.
Look at Mr. Archibald. He was perfectly clean when he came—painfully
clean. Isn’t he splendid now?”
Archibald had finished his row and came toward them, sleeves rolled up,
collar a limp rag, coatless, perspiring, dirt incrusted, radiating
satisfaction.
“There isn’t a bean a twentieth of an inch out of plumb in that row,” he
boasted. “Straight as a string, the whole procession. It’ll be a garden
ornament.
“Funny thing, I never planted a seed before in my life. I can’t believe
the things’ll come up—and I’m likely to perish of joy and pride if they
do. You’ll have to break the news to me gently, Miss Moran. There’s
something about getting down to the soil—”
“Ellen thinks we’ve got down to too much soil,” explained the girl who
had risen to her feet and was futilely brushing at her skirt. “She has
an old-fashioned prejudice in favor of cleanliness and I suppose we’ll
have to humor her by washing before dinner. Stiff?”
“Not a bit.”
“Well, you will be,” she promised encouragingly. “I always am, at first.
Gardening is queer. Every time I finish a day of it, I vow that the game
isn’t worth the candle and that I’ll eat tinned stuff and use wild
flowers for the rest of my life. Then the next morning, I fairly wriggle
with impatience to get out into the garden and go to digging again. It’s
as bad as the cocaine habit. If you aren’t willing to be a slave to it,
you’d better turn your back on it here and now.”
“Too late. I’m a victim—and you’ll have to oversee my digging. It’s the
least you can do when you’ve started me on my downward way. Don’t you
think so, Ellen?”
“Go your ways in and make yourselves decent, the two of you.”
Ellen’s voice was stern but her eyes were merry.
“You’ve made a tremendous hit with her,” the Smiling Lady confided to
him as they went through the hall. “She’s never nice and disrespectful
to anybody unless she likes him enormously.”
He stayed to dinner, after a faint-hearted protest and a murmur of
contrition in regard to Pegeen’s wasted culinary efforts. He voiced the
latter to Ellen when, coming downstairs before his hostess, he met the
woman in the hall.
“Don’t be worryin’ about Peg, sir,” she said reassuringly. “She’s used
to irregular doin’s and she’ll just give you your dinner for supper—the
way that there’ll be nothin’ to do but warm things up and set them on.
It’d be a shame—you to be goin’ and dinner ready here.”
She looked toward the stairway and added, in a low voice:
“And it’s I that’ll be glad to see Miss Nora sittin’ down with one of
her own kind—and her what she is, and everybody crazy about her before,
and all the fine clothes and visitin’ and travelin’ and all—”
“But she’s very happy, here, isn’t she?” the man asked gently.
“Oh, she’s happy. It’s her that has the trick of happiness, but she’s
the lonely days and thinkin’ long’s the weary work. There’s good people
here, but none of them talk her own talk, sir. It’d be well enough for a
bit in the summer, but winter and summer, in and out—it don’t seem
right. If you could have seen how it was in the old days, sir—and now
only that daft John and me to do for her, and she so cheerful and never
a word of regret or wishin’.”
There was sorrow and pride and great love in the plain old Irish face,
and Archibald realized that he was being honored. Ellen was not the
woman to talk of her mistress to any chance comer.
There was a step in the upper hall, and the servant vanished into the
dining-room, while Archibald went forward to meet a vision in white
linen, smooth-haired, immaculate, laughing-eyed.
“Soap and water couldn’t revive my collar,” he said apologetically, “but
my hands and face are approximately clean.”
“You’re very, _very_ beautiful,” said the Smiling Lady. “What’s a
collar, between gardeners!”
He came around to the matter of neighboring again, while they sat at
dinner.
“It’s as new to me as gardening,” he confessed,—“this getting
interested in the people who live round about me and having them take an
interest—approving or otherwise—in me. I can’t quite make up my mind
whether I like it or not. Just at the first jump, I’d say I didn’t.
Theoretically it’s a nuisance. Down in New York, I didn’t care a hoot
whether the chap in the bachelor quarters across the hall from mine
lived or died or drank himself into d-t’s or gave temperance lectures or
wore tweeds or pink velvet tights, and I’d have resented his being
curious about me. But up here—well, everything’s different. I fairly
lap up Peg’s flow of information about the Valley folk and I’m
absorbingly interested in the amount of Mrs. Frisbie’s egg money, and in
Bill Briggs’ habits and in Ezra Watts’ bad reputation. I’m thirsting to
meet Ginsy Shalloway, and I’m Mrs. Neal’s humble admirer. What’s more,
I’ve an amazing desire to make myself solid with them all. Queer, isn’t
it? I suppose it’s mostly Pegeen—Pegeen and you. You two make a
fascinating sort of talisman of human sympathy. Along came gray days and
stupid people. You rub your magic ring—and the world’s an interesting
place, and living in it is glorious business. Makes a chap feel like
humping himself and going shopping for magic rings.”
Nora Moran dimpled at him approvingly across the bowl of June roses that
stood in the center of the table. Spicy pink and white, old-fashioned
garden roses they were. It occurred to Archibald that they rimed with
the face beyond them as no hot-house flowers could have rimed with it.
For one foolish, inconsequent moment he tried to imagine himself buying
orchids for this garden girl. He had bought many orchids. Women liked
them because they were so expensive, but for the Smiling Lady—
He came back from the Fifth Avenue flower shops to the June roses and
the girl beyond them.
“You’re coming on rapidly,” she was saying. “It isn’t every one who
could discover, neighboring and gardening all in one short June. Some
people never discover either of them—poor souls. That’s why the yellow
journals have scandals enough and tragedies enough to keep them going.
But if you’ve got it in you to garden—and to neighbor—Oh, I’ve great
hopes of you. Peggy will make something of you yet.”
“And there aren’t any scandals and tragedies in the country?” he asked
lightly.
A shadow crept into the girl’s smiling eyes.
“But there are—dreadful ones sometimes—and they seem even more
dreadful up here than they do in town because each one stands out so
stark and ugly against the beauty all round about it. I had frightfully
heartachey times when I first began to find the sordid, ugly things
growing along with the loveliness in this quiet country
place—jealousies and feuds and slovenliness and vulgarity and cruelty
and worse—but I worked my way through those heartaches—or at least I
learned to understand and be tolerant The weeds grow with the flowers
everywhere, I guess. And it’s so easy to think too much about your
neighbors’ business when you haven’t anything else to entertain you, and
to magnify little slights and offenses when you haven’t more important
things to occupy your mind. And it’s hard to live up to standards when
there’s no one to appreciate—and natural beauty doesn’t give you much
joy, if you’ve always been doing hard, grinding work in the midst of it.
Gracious! I only wonder that most of the country folk are such plumb
dears as they are.”
“But they garden and neighbor,” prompted Archibald.
“They don’t.” She was too much in earnest to be polite. “You don’t think
raising vegetables and knowing everybody for miles around are gardening
and neighboring, do you? Not a bit of it. You’ve got to put your heart
into the garden and the people if you’re going to do real gardening and
neighboring. When you get around to that, you’ve learned how to be happy
most of the time and contented all of the time. I used to think that
nine tenths of the people I met were uninteresting, but I’ve found out
that, all the time, there weren’t any uninteresting people. There were
only people I hadn’t _got at_.”
Archibald shook his head doubtfully. “Short of using a pickax or an
auger—” he demurred. He was thinking of some of the men and women he
had known.
The girl laughed.
“Aren’t they _awful_—that kind? But there are more of them in town than
in the country. There really are—more in proportion to numbers, I mean.
I don’t mean for a minute that I’ve got at everybody up here in the
Valley but, accidentally or by mainforce, I’ve broken through some such
hard shells and with such surprising results that I’m beginning to have
a comfortable conviction about what’s inside of the very toughest human
crust, if one could only get through to it. Now there’s Ezra Watts. He
lives just a little way from here up the back road—much too near for
the welfare of my chickens and fruit and vegetables. I’ve an idea he
even milks my cows. He’s one of my failures and nobody in the Valley
doubts that he’s bad all the way through. I have awful misgivings myself
sometimes, but in my optimistic moments I still contend that there’s a
decent scrap of soul hidden away somewhere in Ezra—hidden so thoroughly
that even he doesn’t suspect it’s there.”
“I feel strangely drawn to Ezra,” Archibald murmured gravely.
The Smiling Lady flashed back a challenge.
“Why don’t you take him on?” she asked. “I’ve fumbled the thing. Maybe
what he needs is man talk. It’s a long chance, but there’s really
something very sporty about soul hunting.”
There was a mirthful ring even to her sentiment. She talked of souls as
she might have talked of kittens or puppies or marigolds. From that
angle, talk of souls did not seem the indelicate or embarrassing thing
it is taken for by the average person not professionally concerned with
soul culture or soul saving.
“I’m willing to warn you, though,” she conceded generously, “that Ezra
needs disinfecting as much as he needs moral suasion. Nobody will ever
burrow through to his soul until he’s had a bath.”