VI

It was late in the afternoon when Archibald turned up at the shack, and

Pegeen, arrayed in one of the cheapest of the new frocks and very dressy

as to hair ribbons and shoes, came down the path to meet him.

“It was a shame for them to scare you off so you didn’t even come home

to dinner,” she said indignantly, “but you needn’t have been afraid. I

shooed them all away at half-past eleven; they had to go home and get

their own dinners anyway.”

“I wasn’t afraid of my neighbors. I was gardening for one of them.”

For a moment she looked puzzled. Then she knew.

“Miss Moran! Well, if she isn’t the greatest! She could make anybody

garden; was it flowers or vegetables?”

“Beans.”

“Too bad,” said Peg, regretfully. “Of course it’s all nice and exciting

and like helping God with his chores, but flowers seem best. They’re so

perfectly lovely when they come up and blossom—but then, I love string

beans, don’t you? Only they’re just green and I think it’s more fun to

help make something bright colored.”

“Did you ever have a garden of your own?” Archibald asked. They had

reached the shack now and he dropped down on the doorstep and filled his

pipe. Pegeen sat down beside him, after carefully turning up the

abbreviated skirt of her new dress.

“No use dirtying it any faster than I have to,” she explained. “Every

washing takes it out of them even when they aren’t pink. No, I never had

a garden—what you’d call a real garden. We never had much garden.

Sometimes Dad would put in corn or potatoes but mostly he forgot, and if

he didn’t forget them, he did after he’d put them in, and I didn’t have

much time to take care of them. I had some poppies once though,

perfectly wonderful poppies. Miss Moran gave me the seeds. I hadn’t ever

planted any flower seeds at all till one day I was down at her house and

she was working in the flower garden and let me help. I sowed some seed

of those great big blue larkspur—delphiniums she calls them, but I

think larkspur’s nicest, don’t you?—and some poppies too. Poppies have

got the cunningest baby seeds that you don’t dare cover up warm at all

for fear you’ll choke them to death. She let me take some poppy seed

home, and I dug a place right outside Mother’s window. She was sick

then, you know, and after the poppies blossomed, I used to get Mother up

every single day to see them. They were the gladdest, brightest,

danciest things, but they used to make Mother sort of sad sometimes.”

She sat quiet for a few moments, looking out with wistful eyes toward

the far hills, and Archibald laid a large hand over the two small ones

clasped in her lap. The sober little face flashed a quick response.

Happiness was always knocking at the door of Pegeen’s heart even when

sorrow housed there.

“My poppies down at Miss Moran’s were nice too,” she went on, “but I was

awfully disappointed about my larkspur. It didn’t bloom a bit that

summer, and Miss Moran had said it would be blue, and I like blue best

of anything, don’t you? It isn’t so bright as red, but it’s such a

way-deep-down-glad color. Well, that fall, Miss Moran had me move the

larkspur plants over by the lily bed; and one day the next summer, when

I hadn’t been up there for weeks, John came after me with the horse and

said Miss Moran wanted me in a hurry. I was afraid she was sick, but she

wasn’t She just grabbed me when I got there and said:

“ ‘Peggy O’Neill, you’ve been working miracles. Come along quick and see

them.’

“So we held hands and raced to the garden and there were my larkspurs

all blossoming—a great big patch of them with white lilies cuddling up

close to them! Blue? Why, you never saw anything bluer. I looked at them

and my legs went wobbly and I flopped right down and cried. Yes, sir,

honestly I did. I couldn’t stand having helped God make anything so

beautiful. He was used to it but I wasn’t. Isn’t it wonderful that He

could think of so many perfectly splendid things to make in seven days?

There’s no telling what He’d have done, if He’d taken a year to do it.

Did you ever try to think of something more that would have been awfully

nice and that He could have done if He’d taken more time? I’ve tried

lots of times, but I never could. It seems as if He hadn’t forgotten a

thing.

“I’ve never felt the same about myself since I helped Him with those

larkspurs. They bloom every summer, and every time I see them, I feel as

if I’d made a piece of sky. You get Miss Moran to let you plant some

larkspur in her garden. You won’t ever feel real downhearted and

discouraged about yourself afterward. I do think a flower garden’s the

sweetest thing. I wish we had one.”

“Why don’t we have one?” asked Archibald.

Pegeen looked at him doubtfully, saw determination in his face, and

fairly crowed for joy.

“Out in front and along the path! Poppies and bachelor buttons and

marigolds and lots of things that’ll bloom quick—and then larkspur and

phlox and lilies to bloom next summer.”

Her exultant voice suddenly wavered and dropped, and the joy died out of

her.

For a moment the man did not understand. Then he looked ahead and saw

the end of the summer’s trail. Oddly enough he too shrank from the

vision.

“I’m coming back, Peg,” he promised quickly. “I’m surely coming back.

The heart of the world is up here among the hills, I believe, and

there’s nothing to keep me away.”

She smiled again then—but a misty little smile.

“I just thought—all of a sudden—” she explained falteringly. “A

summer’s so short and I’m being so happy—and it’s half-past June

already.”

“That’s why we must hurry with our garden.” There was a sympathetic mist

in the man’s own eyes, but he resolutely dragged the talk away from

sentiment. It’s a way men have.

“We’ll plant all sorts of splendid things and the Smiling Lady will

teach us to work miracles,” he said.

“She’ll give us loads of baby plants. She loves starting new gardens.”

Pegeen was cheerful again now. He had said he would come back and it was

easy for her to believe in happiness.

“To-morrow I’ll dig the beds,” promised Archibald. “Now tell me what the

neighbors thought of your new finery.”

Pegeen was all excitement.

“They couldn’t believe it. They honestly couldn’t. Ginsy Shalloway’ll

talk herself to death about them, and Mrs. Frisbie said that either you

were cracked or just a natural spendthrift, and Mrs. Neal spoke right up

and said you were a big-hearted young gentleman, that’s what you were;

and I hugged her for it and they’re all crazy to know what you get paid

for your pictures, and I said maybe you’d let me take you to see them

only maybe not, because you had lots of painting to do and couldn’t let

visiting interfere. So you don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“But I do want to, Peg. I’m going to garden and to neighbor. I’m

credibly informed that there’s the road to being happy most of the time

and contented all the time. I’m going to send to town for a horse of

mine that’s eating his head off in the stables, and we’ll rent a cart,

and then we can neighbor fast and furiously all up and down the Valley.”

“Oh, my stars!” crooned Pegeen, in ecstasy.

“Can you ride your horse?” she asked suddenly.

“That’s what he’s for, chiefly. Why?”

“Well, I just thought maybe you’d lend him to Miss Moran when you

weren’t neighboring. She loves riding better than anything and she had a

beautiful riding horse when she came, but he hurt himself jumping the

pasture fence and died, and she couldn’t afford to get another. She’s

the loveliest thing on horseback—but, do you know, she rides straddle

just like a boy and she wears breeches and sometimes they show; folks

here thought it was awful at first. They buzzed around to each other’s

houses like a swarm of bees, talking about it, and they thought maybe

Mr. Colby, the minister, ought to take it up. And he wouldn’t. He said

she didn’t go to his church, and that anyway it wasn’t a thing for a

single man to take up with a young lady. So then they thought the

ladies’ aid would have to do something, but they sort of put it off, and

then Mr. Frisbie went to Boston to spend a week with his rich brother

that’s a minister in a big church there. He came back telling that the

parks up there were simply full of ladies riding straddle and that his

brother’s wife said all the richest and properest ladies wore breeches

when they rode and that it was countrified to be shocked. So then

everybody quieted down. Mrs. Neal says Ginsy Shalloway sent for a

pattern for riding breeches, but I don’t believe she’s ever had a call

for it.”

Archibald, who had been chuckling over the Valley’s consternation, had

an inspiration.

“Peggy,” he said, “I wonder if Mrs. Neal could stable two horses for me.

You and I are going to do our neighboring behind a pair—but remember,

Peg, I never heard that the Smiling Lady rode. That extra riding horse

is going to be a lucky accident. Incidentally, I’m going to teach you to

ride him.”

“Oh, my stars!” The small girl crooned it again, from heart fullness.

“And I didn’t even pray for you to come! If I could have thought of

anything as nice as you, I’d have prayed for it, but I couldn’t. So I

just said ‘God bless me’ and I guess He thought that meant sending you.”

“God bless you, Peg,” Archibald said very softly. He couldn’t remember

having asked God to bless any one, since far away bedtimes in which a

very small boy and a very loving mother and a certain little white bed

in a cheerful nursery figured hazily. Come to think of it, he hadn’t

been on speaking terms with God at all, since those old days; but here

in the Happy Valley one met Him at every turn and He seemed very

friendly.

The dinner missed at noon was, according to Nora’s prophecy, warmed up

for supper; and after it was eaten and the dishes had been washed

Archibald walked down to Mrs. Benderby’s with Pegeen, because she was

later than usual and the shadows were black.

As the two passed out of the meadow, they found Mr. and Mrs. Neal

standing in the middle of the road in front of their home, talking

excitedly and looking down toward Pisgah, where a red glow lighted the

sky from behind a crouching black hill.

“What’s up?” Archibald asked. “Oh, I see—fire. What do you think it

is?”

“Another barn, I guess,” Mr. Neal said grimly. “From the looks, I should

say ’twas Frisbie’s. Getting past a joke, this thing is. Makes a man

feel darned uncomfortable when he goes to bed. Something’s got to be

done. That’s the fifth.”

“Fifth what?”

“Fifth barn burning! Set on fire every one of ’em. Nobody suspected at

first, but the fires began coming along too regular to be accidental and

then there were signs of the work found, but they ain’t been able to

catch the fire-bug. He don’t seem to steal anything—crazy, most likely.

Just likes to watch the things burn, but there’s been a big loss and one

house went too, and folks are mighty stirred up about it. I don’t feel

none too easy myself. There’s no telling where the thing’ll hit next.”

“Had detectives on the job, I suppose?” said Archibald.

“Oh, yes, the town got a couple of ’em up here. Ate everything within

sight and looked wise and got nowheres. They sort of suspected Ezra

Watts, but, jumping Jerusha, everybody else had thought of that before

they did. That’s the first rule up here when anything goes wrong.

Suspect Ezra. He’s a good deal of a pill, Ezra is, and I don’t put much

past him in the way of meanness, but I can’t say as I held him

accountable for the drought last year or for my horses having pink eye

this spring. I’ve got a leaning toward proof, and there ain’t a ghost of

proof against Ezra in this barn business—except just his general

cussedness and that he thinks he’s got a grudge against the Valley

folks—but I’m kind of afraid some of the young fellows’ll handle him

rough, without asking for proof, if this barn burning keeps up. When

Nick Bullard and Lem Tollerton and that crowd get a drink or two aboard,

they don’t set much store by law and order. I kind of figure that this

would be a healthy time for Ezra to visit somewheres without waiting to

be invited.”

“You don’t mean that they’d really harm him?” Archibald said

incredulously.

“Well, as I said, there’s just a few of the boys that ain’t strong on

law and order, when they’re full of liquor ’n’ animal spirits ’n’ have

what they’d call a good cause. Of course the rest of us would stop them

if we got wind of their deviltry in time, but we generally don’t and

then when it’s over there’s nobody wants to run them down and jail them

because everybody knows their families and neighbors are with them. Last

time they made trouble they beat up a peddler that had been cheating all

the women. Can’t say he didn’t deserve a licking, but the boys overdid

it and got considerable of a scare themselves. Thought they’d killed the

fellow.

“Ma and I took him in and nursed him up and turned him out all right. He

did talk some about suing for assault and all that, but, shucks, how’d

he know who to sue? The boys wore masks. He was some scared too, and so

he went off as soon as he was able—and glad to go. Glad to have him go,

we were. You’ve got to do you’re duty, but I must say I ain’t strong on

Samaritaning when the hurt party’s as low down a skunk as that peddler

was.

“The boys ain’t been taking any law into their hands since that, but the

whole neighborhood’s so stirred up over this fire-bug—”

“Stop borrowing trouble, Pa,” Mrs. Neal interrupted. “Nice idea of his

neighbors you’ll be giving Mr. Archibald. You’re getting as nervous as a

tadpole over this barn business.”

“Too nervous to put up a pair of horses for me, if I send for them?”

inquired Archibald laughingly, but Mr. Neal’s face was serious as he

answered.

“At your own risk. I’ll be glad to take them but you’d better insure

them.”

Archibald met Mrs. Benderby for the first time that night. She was

sitting on the porch as he and Peg turned in at the gate, and, rising

from her chair, came forward to meet them.

“This is Mr. Archibald,” Pegeen announced with an air of proud

proprietorship.

The woman gave him a thin cold hand. The chill of it made him peer more

closely at her through the starlit gloom, but he could see her face only

in dim outlines. Scanty hair brushed smoothly back from the forehead and

fastened in a tight knob at the back of the head left hollow temples in

view and below them Archibald made out sunken cheeks and the angles of a

sharp chin. But it was the woman’s figure that emphasized most clearly

the chill of the bony hand. Even in the starlight, the sunken chest and

rounded shoulders, the sagging droop of the whole body told their tale

of hard work and physical unfitness and utter weariness.

“I’m glad to meet you,” Mrs. Benderby was saying. “Peg’s told me how

wonderful good you’ve been to her and I think a sight of Peg. I’d ought

to.”

There was weariness in the voice too, yet it strove for a brisk

cheerfulness that was evidently its natural note.

Something tugged suddenly at Archibald’s heartstrings. Life was too hard

for women.

“Yes; you and I couldn’t do without Pegeen,” he said. The friendly

warmth of his voice affected the tired little woman as had the warm

strength of his hand-clasp. There _was_ something about Peg’s Mr.

Archibald, she admitted to herself—something that cheered one up a bit.

That “you and I” had a folksy sort of ring. He wasn’t stuck up if he did

come from New York.

She smiled in the dark and though he could not see the smile he heard it

in her voice.

“When you get used to having Peg around, nothing goes right without

her,” she said. “Seems as if she always knew what you needed or wanted

before you did. She spoils people, Peg does—gets ’em so they can’t live

alone and most of us has to live alone sooner or later—even when

there’s plenty of folks living in the same house with us.”

Archibald nodded. He had lived alone “with plenty of folks” and he knew

what she meant.

“Won’t you sit down, sir?” Mrs. Benderby asked. “We’ll go indoors if you

say, but it’s kind of cool and restful out here in the dark. I like

being in the dark, evenings. You can’t see things you’d ought to get up

and do.”

She had dropped into her rocking chair again and Archibald sat down on a

broken-backed bench, while Pegeen went into the house. He could hear her

bustling about in the kitchen and humming a gay tune as she worked.

“Ain’t she the cheerfulest thing?” Mrs. Benderby said, after a quiet

moment in which she too had been listening to the quick, light steps and

the rollicking tune. “Seems as if, as soon as she’s around, I feel

rested. You just can’t slump down when Peg’s boosting you. Even thinking

about her’s better than medicine. Some days when I ain’t my best and the

work don’t go good, I hang on to the thought of Peg as if ’twas a patent

life-preserver. Funny, ain’t it—a little scrap of a big-eyed thing like

her! She ain’t exactly pretty, Peg ain’t, but I think the angels must be

some like her.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Archibald agreed. He could understand why Pegeen

had felt that she must go over and see to Mrs. Benderby. He felt

strongly impelled to see to her himself—and he smiled as it occurred to

him that perhaps he was really neighboring.

“You must put your heart into the gardens and the people,” the Smiling

Lady had said. Well, he seemed to be putting his heart into Mrs.

Benderby. Something ought to be done about her, something even more than

Pegeen was doing. He didn’t like the remembrance of that clammy hand or

the ache of weariness in the voice that held no trace of complaint or

bitterness.

“You and Peg and I will have to look after each other a little,” he said

later as he rose to go. “Of course I know that Peg could see to both of

us competently with one hand tied behind her, but you and I will get

into the game for our own sakes. I’m going to depend upon you to advise

me about the child. Women understand such things better than men.”

“I’d be proud to help,” she said eagerly.

It seemed to him that the hand she gave him in good night had a thrill

of warmth in it and that the bent shoulders had straightened just a

little.

“Good night, Peg,” he called through the open door.

The small girl came running out.

“I was just getting ready for morning,” she explained. “Mrs. Benderby

has to go off real early, and any way I thought it’d be nice for you and

her to get acquainted without me there.

“It was awfully good of you to bring me home. I wasn’t afraid—not

really—only it’s so comfortable not to have to be not afraid. Good

night.”

And as he went through the gate, she called again.

“Good night I’ll be up to you early.”

Archibald walked home with the friendly, childish voice ringing in his

ears and in his heart an unaccountably fervent thankfulness that she

surely would be “up to him early.” Morning—even a June

morning—wouldn’t, be a cheerful thing with Pegeen away.