The horses came from town and, though stabled by Mr. Neal, were in a way
additional members of the shack family.
“For a man who fled to the country to be alone, this is going some,”
Archibald said to himself, as for the first time he rode up the meadow
path, leading a second saddled horse. Pegeen and Wiggles and Spunky and
Boots and Peterkin—who was not yet well enough to respond to the call
of the wild, were all on hand to welcome the new animals, and
Archibald’s eyes twinkled as he viewed the collection.
“This is where you take your first riding lesson, Peg. I’m going to put
you on Zip,” he said gaily. “Will the menagerie break loose if you take
your eye off it? Suppose the baby should choke the pup and the pup
should bite the cat and the cat should eat the crow?”
“They’ll be good,” promised Pegeen comfortably as she loosened the
baby’s strangle-hold on the pup. “Aren’t those horses splendid? I wonder
how Susy feels about them. It’s real hard on her, I think, having them
come into her own barn, putting on city airs, and saying snippy things
about farm horses and farm ways.—I’ll bet they do. They look that
way—sort of proud and finicky and stuck up, but maybe the country’ll do
them lots of good. They’re most certain to like Susy after they really
get to know her. She’s so sensible and nice.”
“Sure thing,” agreed Archibald. “Nothing like living in the country for
giving one a sense of values.”
Peggy’s face was flushed with excitement. Her lips and eyes were
brimming with smiles as she waited to be tossed up to the saddle.
“I’ve been on Susy and on Mr. Frisbie’s Dick,” she said, her voice
trembling a little with eagerness, “but never on a real, prancy riding
horse like Zip.”
“Not afraid?” Archibald asked, noticing the quiver of the voice.
She looked surprised.
“Afraid? Me? Not a bit. Some way or other I always forget to be afraid
of things till afterwards; but I’m so excited that my throat’s all
shirred up in puckers.”
For an hour he taught her the laws of bit and bridle and saddle and
horse nature; and she took to it all, as a duck takes to water, quick,
fearless, bubbling over with joy.
“You’ll make a horsewoman, Peg,” Archibald said, as he lifted her down
from the saddle at last. “I’ll have you jumping fences, before the
summer is over.”
“Miss Moran used to. She’d make her horse jump anything. Mr. Meredith
and she didn’t pay a bit of attention to fences—unless there was
something they didn’t want to trample down.”
Archibald turned to her quickly.
“Meredith? Who’s Meredith?”
Pegeen settled herself comfortably for a bit of gossip. She loved to
tell Archibald about people. He was always so interested.
“Why, he’s the one that’s going to marry Miss Moran,” she explained.
“Anyway, that’s what everybody thinks; but they don’t seem to be in a
very big hurry about it. He’s awfully rich and he goes scooting off to
Europe and around the world and everywhere; but he comes up here every
summer and stays a long while—over in Pittsfield. I guess he couldn’t
stand boarding anywhere around here. He looks as if he’d be real
particular. But he comes over most every day in a motor car, and he and
Miss Moran have perfectly beautiful times. He’s lots older than she
is—only I don’t believe he’s as old as his hair is. It’s gray; but his
face doesn’t match it very well—except his eyes. Sometimes they look
sort of old and sad. He’s real handsome—and nice too; only he’s nice in
a proud way—not a bit like you. I couldn’t ever see to him. I wouldn’t
suit—but he’d buy me anything I needed—if somebody’d tell him I needed
it. I guess most rich people are like that. They want to be kind to poor
folks, but they don’t know how. I don’t see how you ever found out
exactly the right way. It isn’t just giving money. It’s being friends.
Mr. Meredith couldn’t neighbor the way you do, no matter how hard he
tried. Miss Moran takes him around to see folks and he’s as nice and
polite as can be; but everybody knows he’s come just to please her and
that he’ll never come again unless she brings him. He gave the money for
the free library down in Pisgah and he fixed up the schoolhouse, and
when Joe Daniels got hurt last summer Mr. Meredith had a big doctor come
all the way from New York to mend Joe’s back, and when the Potters were
going to be put out of their house and hadn’t a bit of money he paid off
the mortgage and got Mr. Potter a job over in Pittsfield—but he didn’t
do any of it for the Valley. He did it for Miss Moran. I’ll bet he
wouldn’t know Joe Daniels or Mr. Potter if he’d meet them on the road.
So, you see, nobody bothers about being grateful to him. They’re just
grateful to Miss Moran. I suppose she’s grateful to him, and that’s all
he wants; but I’d hate not to get more fun out of doing things for
people than he does. I’d want to see them being happy because I’d done
the things, wouldn’t you? My stars, but I do love to see people being
happy, when it’s my doings.”
“What makes you think Miss Moran is going to marry him?” Archibald
asked. He did not seem as interested in abstract discussions as he
usually did.
“Why, anybody can see that he wants her to.”
“And she?”
Pegeen thought it over.
“Well, I don’t know that she wants to so very hard; but I guess she
doesn’t mind. He’s so awfully good to her and she’s known him for years
and years and her father thought a heap of him—Ellen told me that—and
you know it’s nice and comfortable to have somebody looking out for you
and loving you better than anything. Miss Moran gets lonesome sometimes.
It’s all right about neighboring, but you do need somebody special—only
it seems as if I’d like to be more excited about it, if I were going to
marry anybody—and I’d want him younger. Gray hair’s elegant looking;
but I think a lover ought to have brown hair, don’t you? Yellow wouldn’t
be as bad as gray; but I’d choose brown.”
“Did Ellen tell you anything else about him?” Pegeen shook her head.
“Nothing much. Ellen never does talk much; but I asked her one day
whether Miss Moran had known Mr. Meredith a long time and that’s how she
came to tell me about her father’s thinking so much of him. I don’t
believe Ellen wants them to get married.”
“Why not?” There was a note of eagerness in Archibald’s voice.
“Oh, I don’t know. She said he was a fine man and all; but that
springtime was mating time; and then she folded up her lips the way she
does when she doesn’t like things.”
Archibald dropped the subject, mounted his horse, and took Zip’s bridle
rein.
“I’m going over to see whether Miss Moran feels like riding,” he said
crisply. There was an aggressive air about him as he rode away, and
Pegeen watched him with puzzled eyes until he disappeared around a bend
in the road. Then she seated herself and tried to accommodate Boots and
Wiggles and Spunky in her small gingham lap, all at one time.
“Wiggles,” she said seriously, “I don’t believe he liked it about Mr.
Meredith. No, sir; he didn’t like it one bit. Do you suppose?—Oh, my
stars, Wiggles, wouldn’t it be lovely?” She patted Boots’ back with an
experienced hand until he had traveled far into Slumberland. Then she
turned once more to the pup, who sat waiting with his head on one side
and his intelligent brown eyes fixed on her face.
“Wiggles,” she said, “you can bite Mr. Meredith when he comes. I won’t
care.”
The pup gave an ecstatic lunge and licked her cheek with his wet, red
tongue. She laughed, as she wiped off the kiss.
“I was sure you’d _love_ to bite him,” she said approvingly, “only you’d
better do it when he hasn’t got that white bull terrier of his with him.
Jimmy says it’s a terrible fighter.”
* * * * *
The Smiling Lady felt like riding. She felt so much like it that she
sparkled in the most amazing way at the mere mention of it.
“Such beauties,” she said, leaning across the porch railing to pat the
horses. “And how fine for Peggy to learn to ride! She wasn’t afraid, was
she?”
“Afraid? Peg?” Archibald laughed the idea to scorn.
“Yes; that’s so,” agreed the Smiling Lady. “She’s Irish. We’re the
reckless lot. It’s only ourselves we’ve to fear. Just a few minutes, and
I’ll get my habit.”
She ran upstairs and Archibald, waiting, heard her singing somewhere,
gay lilting snatches of song that told of joy at the heart of her.
In ten minutes a slim boyish figure came out upon the porch. She was all
in brown from the crown of her soft felt hat to the toes of her smart
tan boots. The long coat had been made by a tailor who knew his
business. The soft shirt and stock were eminently correct. She was well
turned out, this young Amazon.
A light pressure of a boot in his hand and she was in the saddle. A
moment more and they were off into the sweet of Summitland.
“I’ll take you along the back road and up Witch Hill,” she said. “It has
the name of names for it, and how that ever happened I can’t imagine.
The loveliest places usually have the worst names. There’s Hog Hill
Road. It’s a dream of loveliness, and how any one ever had the heart to
turn hogs loose on it! Of course they say it’s the hog back shape of the
hill that gave it its name, but when I ride there, even on the
heavenliest day, I fancy I hear gruntings. Now Witch Road is all magic.
It lives up to its name. There’s a tradition that once upon a time an
old witch lived in a little hut that’s crumbling away beside the road at
the hilltop. I’ve an idea she threw a spell over the whole hill and it
lingers. There’s Ezra Watts!”
“Good morning, Mr. Watts!”
A man, standing in the doorway of a dilapidated little house over whose
forlornness a willow wept miserably, muttered an almost inaudible
salutation. His weak, evil face did not lighten even for the Smiling
Lady. Slouching, ragged, dirty, he stood in the sunshine like a blot on
the summer day, and stared out at the riders sullenly from under a
matted thatch of thick, straggling, black hair.
“Pleasant, friendly chap!” Archibald commented lightly.
The Smiling Lady sighed.
And then they forgot him, for they turned from the sunshiny back road,
into an enchanted wood where a wide mossy trail wound gently, gently
upward through shifting light and shade. Moist, pungent wood scents
haunted the air. The gurgle of running water, insistent, mirthful, told
that hidden among the ferns and mosses a brook followed the road
companionably.
“It comes out into the open farther up,” the girl said as she listened,
“but down here it hides just for the fun of the thing.”
“A naiad’s trick,” Archibald suggested. “Probably there are fauns
abroad.”
“No; only the Little People,” she corrected. “I’m all for Irish fairies
myself. The poets and the artists and the mythology classes have taken
the heart out of the Greek ideas, but the Celts—Oh, well, we’ve had our
own troubles with poets, but they haven’t killed and stuffed all our
gods and heroes and Little People yet. Father and I used to spend months
in Ireland every year and I’ve heard such tales there—Oh, such tales!
I’d always the hope of seeing the Little People myself or of stepping
off into the Green World, and finding my way to Tir ’nan Og. Things like
that seem so possible in Ireland, and some way or other Witch Mill is
the same for me. It’s full of shapes I can’t quite see and voices I
can’t quite hear, and I look and listen and wait. I’m always excited up
here. The wonderful thing might happen any moment. There are places like
that, you know!”
She was talking lightly but there were dreams in her eyes.
Archibald’s thoughts ran back to the girl of the puppies and kittens and
babies in the birch wood, to the girl of the fireside confidence and the
Irish love songs, to the gay, grubby girl of the vegetable garden, to
the girl of the June roses and the heart for neighboring. Then he came
back to the girl of the boyish clothes and the dreaming face who rode
beside him up the Witch Way, listening and looking and waiting for the
Wonderful Thing; and he too found it easy to believe in wonders. The
enchanted wood was having its way with him.
Up and up they climbed. The road rose very gradually, winding its
leisurely way through glades and glens, losing itself among pine
shadows, loafing across sunlit clearings; and always at its side was the
brook, whispering and chuckling and hinting at mysteries.
“It comes from a great spring at the very top of the hill beside the
witch’s cottage,” the Smiling Lady said as she leaned to watch the
sunlight playing over smooth brown stones beneath the liquid green of a
fern-fringed pool.
“I usually lunch up there—and by the same token I’ve sandwiches in my
pockets now. Nature worship’s an appetizing thing and Ellen knows it,
but I didn’t give her time to do her best to-day and it’s a nuisance to
carry more than sandwiches anyway. Supper will be waiting when we go
home.”
“You come up here often?” the man asked. Back of the question there was
an eagerness, even a protest. It had occurred to him that Meredith and
she had ridden up this way and lunched beside the Witch’s Well; and
there was something about the idea that he found unpleasant, most
unpleasant.
“Oh, yes, often,” she was saying.—“Or at least I did come when I had my
horse. It’s a long walk and the road isn’t very practicable for driving.
I’ve had beautiful days up here.”
He could not ask with whom she had shared them and he assured himself
stoutly that the matter was of no importance to him anyway—only, of
course, a man whom Peg and Nora didn’t like—Personally, he was
altogether unconcerned. Oh, altogether—still he rather hoped she had
not brought Meredith up Witch Way.
The road found the hilltop at last and wandered off, inconsequently
along the ridge; but the brook and the Girl and the Man stayed behind at
the Witch’s Well.
It lay cool and gleaming among moss-covered rocks. Little ferns and lush
green grasses crept down between the rocks to peer into the water. A
great old tree flung shadows down upon it. Under the tree a mossy
cushion invited, promised.
The Smiling Lady slipped from her saddle before Archibald could reach
her and dropped down beside the well with a sigh of content. When the
man came back from tying the horses in the shade, she was leaning
against the huge tree trunk, her hat thrown on the ground beside her—a
Rosalind in ultra modern doublet and hose and fair enough to justify an
Orlando in hanging verses on all the trees of the enchanted wood.
Pegeen had been quite truthful. “Sometimes they did show.” For an
instant a vision of the polite and embarrassed bachelor clergyman in
Pisgah, of the perturbed ladies’ aid society and the agitated Valley
censors caused Archibald’s lips to twitch nervously, but he smothered
the smile at its birth and stretched himself out luxuriously on the moss
at the neatly booted feet.
Even in riding breeches and boots she was more utterly without
self-consciousness, more simply, adorably feminine than any other woman
in muslin and blue ribbons. It would be blind virtue that could call the
Smiling Lady immodest.
“I could have loved that witch,” he said lazily, closing his eyes the
better to feel the moss beneath his head and the breeze on his cheeks
and to hear the drip, drip of water trickling among the rocks, and then
opening them hastily not to lose sight of the face against the
background of rugged bark.
“I’ve felt that way myself,” the girl confessed.—“A woman who would
come away up here into the quiet places and settle down with the forest
at her back and the spring near her door and the whole Valley spread out
before her eyes!
“It’s a heavenly sweet place to sit on a summer’s day, weaving spells,
isn’t it? They say she was old and ugly, but I think that was only when
she went down among the Valley folk. Up here she must have been young
and beautiful and she smiled a wonderful smile as she worked
enchantment. I’m sure of it.”
“It’s believable,” admitted the man who was watching her face. It was
easy, astonishingly easy, for him to believe in a witch who was young
and beautiful and who sat on a hilltop smiling and working enchantment.
They idled the afternoon away with talk and laughter and drowsy
silences; and being very humanly hungry in the midst of all the glamour,
they finally ate Ellen’s six sandwiches and sighed for more.
“The next time,” said the Smiling Lady, “we will bring a knapsack
luncheon and make tea.”
“The next time!” He liked the promise in it.
She rose to her knees and leaning over the spring cupped her hands and
drank.
“You knew,” she said seriously, looking back across her shoulder at
Archibald, “that it’s the Well at the World’s End?”
“I guessed it,” he said as seriously.
“And whoso drinks the nine drops shall win his heart’s desire,
At the Well o’ the World’s End,”
she quoted softly. Then she leaned toward him, laughing, and touched his
lips nine times with the cool wet forefinger of a dripping hand.
For one reckless moment, he was tempted to seize the daring hand, to
hold it fast and kiss it, from pink finger tips to blue veined wrist.
With any other woman he had ever known he would have dared it, with any
other woman the thing would have been a challenge—but he looked into
the laughing face so near him, and buried his hands in the moss beside
him.
She was different. It was too much to risk—this blessed comradeship. He
did not dare.
“Shall win his heart’s desire,” he echoed. “And if he does not know the
desire of his heart?”
“One day he will learn it and then he will be glad of the nine drops
from the Well o’ the World’s End.”
Archibald closed his eyes and lay quiet, but there was tumult in his
thoughts. In May he had been so sure that he knew the face of his
heart’s desire, had been mad with the beauty of it, hungered and
thirsted for it, broken heart and spirit in pursuit of it In May!—Now,
in July, he could feel the cool touch of the nine drops from the Well o’
the World’s End without any stirring of the old longing, any throb of
the old pain. The fever had died quite out of him and the face that
looked at him from that faraway Maytime, was beautiful—but not the face
of his heart’s desire.
The Happy Valley had done it. The Happy Valley and Pegeen and his
Smiling Lady, and he was ashamed to have been so quickly cured, so light
of love, yet glad with the gladness of one who wakens from long illness
and pain and fevered dreams, to consciousness and peace and the face of
a friend.
He opened his eyes and looked up at the Smiling Lady. “The face of a
friend.” The thought did not quite satisfy him. Friendship seemed
lukewarm business for Witch Hill.
“I wonder,” he said, “whether you are as understanding as you seem.”
The laughter died out of her face. She looked at him with quiet eyes and
waited. She was used to confidences, this girl whom the Valley loved and
trusted.
“Could you understand a man’s having made a fool of himself over a
woman—all kinds of a fool—tossing aside his ideals and ambitions and
hopes for love of her, letting her fool him to the limit—and then
crawling away into hiding with his hurt and his bitterness?”
The Smiling Lady nodded gravely.
“Yes,” she said; “I could understand that.”
The man raised himself on his elbow and looked into the quiet eyes.
There were incredulity, wonder, and something that was part shame, part
gladness, and wholly boyish in his face.
“But if the man, after all his struggle and unhappiness, should suddenly
find himself whole, clean quit of the pain and the desire, glad of life
again and eager for happiness—could you understand that? This is a
place for oracles. Read me the riddle. What is a man worth to whom that
thing can happen?”
There was self-contempt in his voice, but pleading in his eyes. Perhaps,
in her merciful heart, this Smiling Lady could find charity for a man
who had wasted himself on a love that had not even the excuse of
greatness.
“He is worthy of what he can win,” the girl said gently.
“Nothing less Delphic than that for a man with the nine drops on his
lips?” Archibald urged. She shook her head.
“There’s no promise that the water will give him whatever he happens to
want,” she said. “He’s to win his heart’s desire; but he must prove that
he knows the one desire of his heart and is worthy of it, before it is
given to him.—That’s the way I’d read the riddle.”
He thought it over and nodded assent.
“That’s fair—but when he has proved it?—”
She sprang to her feet and stood looking out over the Valley.
“Then he will meet the Wonderful Thing,” she said. She laughed as she
said it, striving to put their talk back into the realm of whimsy; but
her eyes were very sweet, and looking down into them the man, who had
risen and stood beside her, had a vague glimpse of the Wonderful Thing
coming to meet him along mysterious, enchanted ways.
They rode home through the sunset, and Archibald stayed for supper in
the house among the maples, but after that moment on the hilltop, their
talk was all of impersonal things. The girl led and the man followed.
They discussed the advisability of draining the east meadow and the
probable effect of spraying the cabbages with kerosene emulsion and the
Valley’s need of a social center. Not for an instant was sentiment
allowed to show its head, yet Archibald went back to the shack with a
singing heart He wakened the next morning with an odd sense of having
journeyed in a far country and come back to a familiar world where all
was not quite as it had been before his going; and, puzzling over the
change, he came face to face with the truth. He was in love with the
Smiling Lady. He had been in love with her ever since his first glimpse
of her; but it had taken Witch Hill magic to clear the fog from his
brain. He sprang from bed hastily, eager to be up and about, in a world
new made; and Pegeen, in the kitchen, heard him whistling gaily as he
dressed. The past clutched at him and he shook it off with a laugh.
Ghosts were foolish, futile things—but his whistle ceased abruptly on a
high note as, looking eagerly into the future, he was confronted by a
man with graying hair and tired eyes. He had forgotten Meredith; and,
for a moment, the thought of him sluiced his warm happiness with
chilling doubt; but he shook it off, too. Hadn’t the nine drops touched
his lips and wasn’t he sure now, sure beyond possibility of mistake,
that he knew his heart’s desire?
His mood of exultant happiness lasted until he met Nora Moran again.
Then its glad certainty wavered and doubts came creeping in; for things,
in the prosaic Valley world, were not as they had been on Witch Hill. In
some mysterious way, his lady had clothed herself in aloofness. It was
not that she was not kind. There was nothing of which he could take
hold, nothing of which he could demand an explanation. She was very
friendly, very gracious, but the old intimacy was lacking and not, by
any force or strategy, could he manage to see her alone. For some
reason, she had gone within herself and gently closed the door; and,
though he rebelled against her withdrawal, he was afraid he understood
it. She had taken alarm, there beside the Witch’s Well, had realized
that he wanted more than friendship, and, being promised to another
man— Yes; that must be it. She was not free and she wanted to warn him
in time, before there could be need of words, before he could give her
face to his heart’s desire and take the wrong road for happiness.
That was like the Smiling Lady. She was no cheap coquette. It was not in
her to deal unfairly. If she had given her love, even if she had given
only her promise to some one else, then she was doing only what a woman
like her would do; and he must accept it as a man she could make her
friend would accept it. Only—there was a chance that he was misreading
her mood, that gossip was wrong, that Meredith was nothing more to her
than an old and dear friend. While there was a doubt, one might fight
against exile.
In his perplexity he turned to Ellen. She had always shown her liking
for him. She would tell him the truth, unless loyalty to her mistress
forbade. One afternoon, when he had ridden up to the house among the
maples only to be told that its lady was out and away somewhere, he
spoke what was in his thought.
“What is it, Ellen?”
The old woman looked at him kindly with her shrewd, far-seeing eyes, but
was noncommittal.
“Sure, there’s nothin’, sir. Herself is away somewhere for a walk. She’s
fair set on roamin’ these days.”
He brushed evasion aside.
“Tell me, Ellen, if you can tell me without betraying confidence; Is
Miss Moran engaged to this Mr. Meredith of whom I hear?”
The homely Irish face softened to sympathy for an instant, then went
back to its reserve.
“She is that, sir.”
There were other questions burning his lips, but he forced them back.
One does not ask a servant whether her mistress loves the man she means
to marry.
“Thank you, Ellen,” he said simply, as he turned away. He was in the
saddle, when the woman who had stood watching him stepped to his side.
“’Twas her father’s doin’, God rest his soul,” she said. Before he could
answer, she had gone swiftly into the house.
Archibald rode away, repeating the words to himself. “’Twas her father’s
doin’.” Now, why had she told him that? Did she mean him to understand
that the girl’s own heart was not in the marriage? Did she think that it
lay in his power to interfere? Did she believe that her mistress cared
more for him than for the man she had promised to marry? For a moment or
two, his heart beat high. Then again it was a leaden weight. The Smiling
Lady was not to be swept off her feet by any lover. Since she had given
her word to Meredith, perhaps to her father too,—No; she would not
listen, if he should plead; and, even if she would, there were things no
fellow could do. He had never believed that all was fair either in love
or in war.
It was Mrs. Neal who brought him word of Meredith’s arrival. She
billowed into the shack one morning to borrow some coffee and settled
into the largest of the chairs to rest and gossip, while Pegeen went
after the coffee.
“Met Miss Moran’s beau yet?” she asked. “No? Well, I guess he just come
yesterday. They went by our house this morning and she stopped to ask
about a ham I’d promised her. Pretty as a picture, she looked. Pinkish,
soft sort of a veil around her head, and her cheeks pinker. They make a
mighty hansome couple. I’ll say that for them, even if he is mite old
for her. I should say he’d make a first-rate husband—kind as any woman
could ask. You can see that in his face and in his ways, only he can’t
help being quiet and a little bit stiff—kind of like a pudding where
you’ve used too much gelatin but got the flavor all right. John, that
works down at Miss Moran’s, told Neal last night that he’d heard they
was going to be married this fall and go off to Egypt or some heathen
place like that for the winter. I tell you, the Valley’ll miss Miss
Moran.”
“Yes; she’ll be missed.” Archibald admitted.
“Peggy,” he said, after their neighbor had gone away, “you’ll have to
keep me hard at my gardening and my neighboring. It isn’t going to be
easy for me to be contented all the time.”
“Yessir.” There was a trace of anxiety in her ready smile. Something was
wrong in his face and voice and she was quick to notice it. “The garden
doesn’t need much now; but neighbors always need a lot. Shall we go and
see the Kelleys this afternoon? He’s up now; but he isn’t well enough to
work and she says he gets awfully lonesome and discouraged.”
In their way to the Kelleys they stopped at the house under the maples.
Archibald proposed it. He wanted to meet the man the Smiling Lady was
going to marry; wanted to meet him and have done with it. When a dream
refused to lie down decently and die of its own accord, the thing to do
with it was to kill it and the sooner, the better.
So he and Pegeen made their call on the Smiling Lady, finding a warm
welcome—and Richard Meredith, which was what Archibald had expected. He
took the measure of the man, as he shook hands with him and,
involuntarily, his hand tightened. This was a man. He liked the quiet
manner, the quiet voice, the air of distinction, the refinement and
strength of the mouth, the kindness in the eyes—but, as he noted the
fine lines about the kind eyes and the gray hair above them, his heart
cried out Ellen’s protest. Springtime was mating time.
The Smiling Lady was quiet, too, that afternoon. She and Archibald
talked together over the teacups, while Pegeen sat in the hammock with
Richard Meredith—at his invitation; and the teacup talk of casual
things was punctuated by gay little peals of laughter from the child and
deeper answering laughter from the man beside her. They seemed to be
getting on famously together, those two.
“Do you know,” Pegeen announced to Archibald, when an hour later they
rode away, “I honestly believe I could see to Mr. Meredith after all. I
never really talked to him before and he isn’t a bit the way I thought
he was. He isn’t proud inside atall; and, if he wasn’t going to marry
Miss Moran, so that he can’t possibly need anything, I’d think he sort
of needed seeing to. There’s a lonesomey look in his eyes.”
“That’s better than a lonesomey feeling in his heart,” Archibald said
with a shade of bitterness in his voice. Meredith was all right; but he
didn’t care to hear Peggy praising him.
They turned into the back road as he spoke; and, far ahead, by the
roadside, he saw a willow tree mourning forlornly over a tumble-down
cottage. A sudden whim seized him.
“Why don’t you take him on?” the Smiling Lady had asked. Perhaps, some
very strenuous neighboring would be good for this bitter mood of his.