Mrs. Benderby proved herself a most satisfactory addition to the family.
Just at first there was a ripple on the surface because Pegeen jealously
resented any infringement of her rights in the matter of seeing to
Archibald, but the two had that out promptly and satisfactorily.
“It’s this way, Peg,” the man explained seriously. “Mrs. Benderby needs
something to do. She’ll feel dependent and unhappy if she isn’t allowed
to make herself useful, and the only way she can make herself useful is
by cooking and washing dishes. It’s different with you. Cooking and dish
washing were the least of the things you did for me. You did them mighty
well. I can’t deny that, but you’ve fed my heart and washed the cobwebs
out of my eyes, and you can afford to turn the cooking and dish washing
over to somebody else. I want you free to go with me anywhere at any
time. Your job is seeing to my heart and soul, Peggy O’Neill. As long as
you can do that why should you give a hoot who sees to my meals and
dishes?”
“I’m a pig! I’m a horrid little pig,” Peg always repented as
enthusiastically as she did everything else. “I’ll go and tell Mrs.
Benderby so right now. I was perfectly snippy to her about coddling your
eggs this morning, but she can coddle away just as she wants to, as long
as she gets them right. You’ve got to have them _right_ though, and,
please, I’d so much rather plan what you’re going to have for meals. I
can do it better. Honestly I can.”
“I haven’t a doubt of it,” said Archibald. “Plan away—only don’t grudge
Mrs. Benderby the cook stove and the dish pan.”
All went smoothly after that. There was more time for the neighboring
expeditions, for long walks and drives, for picnics, in which Jimmy
Dawes was usually included. He was Pegeen’s humble slave, although he
would have suffered tortures rather than admit it. He haunted the shack;
but, ostensibly, his devotion was for Archibald and the offerings he
laid at that amused young man’s feet were many. He brought Archibald
pailfuls of red raspberries. Pegeen adored red raspberries. He presented
Archibald with bunches of pink roses from Grandmother Dawes’ garden.
Pegeen was daft about pink roses. He caught fish for Archibald’s
breakfast. Fish was the thing Pegeen liked best for breakfast. But to
Peg, herself, the boy was painstakingly off-hand and brusk, giving her
plainly to understand that she was only a girl and must be kept in her
place. She submitted meekly and wound him around her finger, after the
immemorial fashion of girls, even of very small girls.
She wound Archibald around the same slim finger. He was what Peg would
have called “lonesomey” round the heart, during these long summer days,
and Pegeen was good for lonely hearts. A world in which she loved and
petted and companioned and made merry couldn’t be such a very forlorn
place; and making her happy was a consoling and satisfactory occupation.
The child’s thin little face had filled out. The old anxious look had
gone from her eyes. The promise of beauty was fast finding fulfilment.
“Have you noticed how lovely Peggy is, now-a-days?” Nora Moran asked
Archibald one afternoon, when he and she met in the Village store, while
Peg waited outside on Zip.
“She was always lovely.”
The Smiling Lady laughed at his quick protest.
“Always,” she agreed, “but she’s getting lovelier by the minute. One of
these days she will be wonderfully beautiful. There’s an exquisite
delicacy about her.”
“But she’s perfectly strong and well.”
Archibald’s voice held a note of alarm.
“Absolutely. I didn’t mean that she looked frail—but she’ll never be
the buxom, dashing kind. Her beauty won’t jump at you. It will haunt
you. I think that Irish type is the loveliest in the world—the black
hair and the deep blue eyes and the clear skin and the flush that comes
and goes—and when you add the sweetness of Peg’s mouth and the love in
her eyes and the freckles on her impertinent little nose—I rather think
those freckles are fading, though. They’ll soon be gone.”
“I’d miss them,” Archibald said regretfully. “And I hope she won’t be a
raving, tearing beauty. She’d break her heart because she couldn’t see
to all the sighing swains. I’m afraid she _is_ headed that way, though.
I’ve noticed it myself—and she’s better than good to look at. She has a
way with her.”
He talked lightly; but he didn’t believe that the black-haired,
blue-eyed type was the loveliest the world had to show. There was a
certain reddish gold hair that was neither brown nor auburn; and there
were eyes that were sometimes the color of sea water over sand and
sometimes violet and sometimes darkly gray— Still, Pegeen _was_
blooming like a wild rose. There was no doubt about that.
Jimmy noticed it, too. He commented upon it one day when Pegeen and he
had left Archibald smoking lazily, after a picnic lunch, and had gone
off in search of berries for dessert.
“You’re better looking than you used to be, Peg,” he said, staring
critically at her across a blueberry bush from which they were stripping
the fruit.
“Uh-huh,” agreed Pegeen. Her mouth being full of berries, she was
temporarily incapable of more eloquent assent.
Jimmy felt that he ought to snub her, for her soul’s good; but
really—in that pink sun-bonnet— Oh, well girls were funny.
“What are you going to do when Mr. Archibald goes off and gets married?”
he asked abruptly.
Pegeen choked over her mouthful of berries and looked at him, in
wide-eyed dismay.
“Jimmy Dawes, it isn’t so,” she cried.
“Silly!” Jimmy’s tone was kindly contemptuous. Girls always went off
half-cocked. “I didn’t say he was going right off now and get married. I
just asked you what you’d do when he did.”
“Maybe he won’t.” She tried to feel hopeful; but Jimmy wouldn’t allow
it.
“Maybe nothing! Of course he will.”
Peggy sat back on her heels and put her pail down. She had lost all
interest in berrying.
“Oh, Jimmy,” she sighed. “Whatever’d you make me think about that for?
Everything’s so nice just as it is.”
“Yes; but you’ll be getting married yourself some day. Then what’d he
do?”
She thought it over.
“Well, if he’d wait till I grow up he could marry me and then I could go
right on seeing him.”
“Catch him waiting!” Jimmy’s emphasis was scornful. It implied
disrespect for Pegeen’s charms; but she was not offended.
“No; I suppose not,” she agreed. “It’d be an awfully long time and he’d
be as old as anything. Well, anyway, he isn’t keeping company with
anybody now; and when he does go off and get married, I’ll just have to
do the best I can. Let’s go back. My pail’s full.”
As they stood up, side by side, the boy looked down at the girl and a
sudden red warmed the brown of his face.
“I’ll tell you what, Peg,” he said. “You grow up and marry me.”
“I’d love to.”
The cheerful promptness of the consent was most flattering; but, even at
fifteen, the wooer felt that something was lacking. For a moment he
hesitated, looking down into the frank blue eyes. Then he laughed and
took Peg’s pail of berries.
“Well, don’t you forget it. That’s all,” he said with masterful
gruffness, as he turned away to find the trail. He had never carried her
pail before. Somewhere back in Pegeen’s brain a disconcerting idea took
form. Jimmy was growing up. He’d be going away to school next, and Mr.
Archibald would get married and have a wife to see to him.
She followed Jimmy’s sturdy figure down the hill with lagging steps and
her face was very sober when they joined Archibald under the trees.
“Tired?” he asked.
She smiled at him; but the attempt wasn’t altogether successful.
“No, I’m not tired,” she said; “but, someway or other, I feel lonesome.”
He pulled her down on the grass and she curled up comfortably beside
him; but the subdued mood lasted.
“What’s the matter, Peg?” Archibald asked, as they stood in the doorway
of the shack, late that afternoon. He was in his riding clothes and off
to Pisgah to have Zip shod; but he stopped to put a finger under
Pegeen’s chin and turn her face up to his.
“Something’s wrong, dear. Tell me about it.”
Her long black lashes dropped over her woeful eyes, the wild rose flush
came into her cheeks, her lips quivered.
“Why, Peg!”
She hid her face against the front of his riding coat.
“It isn’t anything,” she said with a little sob in her voice. “Honestly,
it isn’t anything—only I’ll be so—l-lonesome, when somebody else sees
to you.”
For a moment he had a helpless sense of being a bungling man. Then he
sat down on the doorstep and pulled her down beside him.
“Now see here, Peg,” he said with simple seriousness. “You are too
sensible to spoil our happiness by worrying over things that may never
happen or over things that aren’t going to happen for a long time. One
of these days you’ll be going away to school. I’m going to attend to
that, and then you’ll be growing up and traveling in Europe and going
out in society and I’ll need somebody to see to me in the off times when
you’re too busy. And then you’ll be falling in love with some fine chap
and getting married and you’d feel mighty bad if you had to go off
knowing that there wasn’t anybody to see to me properly after you were
gone. Now wouldn’t you?”
“Y-y-yess,” faltered Peg. Her eyes were perceptibly more cheerful. The
bits about school and Europe had appealed to her imagination.
“There you are,” Archibald summed up triumphantly. “Of course I don’t
need any one else to see to me now, and I’m not going to have anybody,
and nobody could ever take your place; but when you do go away to school
and to Europe and all that, you’d rather have me married to somebody
than leave me all at loose ends, now wouldn’t you?”
Pegeen performed one of her amazing about-face movements.
“You’d have to be married,” she said firmly. “I wouldn’t budge a step,
unless you were.”
Archibald laughed.
“Well, then, that’s all right; but there’s no use bothering about it as
long as you and I can be together; and there’s small chance of my
marrying at all, Pegeen.”
The laughter had died out of him and he stood looking down the Valley
with eyes that did not see the meadows or the distant hills.
“You see, it’s this way, Peg. I can’t have the girl I want and there’s
no other.”
There was pain in his voice and Pegeen slipped a small hand into his.
Not a word did she say; but the grip of the little brown hand and the
sympathy in the great eyes were comforting things. He shook off the blue
devils and smiled down at her.
“So that’s how it is, Pegeen—and now I’m going to the blacksmith’s.”
Down in Pisgah, he found public opinion, as represented by the men
loafing about the smithy, in a ferment. There had been another barn
burning during the previous night and, though the value of the property
destroyed had been small, the fire seemed to have been the proverbial
last straw. Some of the bolder and younger spirits of the community were
outspoken in their determination to defy the law and take the matter
into their own hands.
“If there ain’t proof, then guesswork’ll have to do,” one of them said
to Archibald when he entered protest against the wild talk; and even the
older and more conservative men in the crowd nodded assent. The camel’s
back was broken. Valley patience had given out. No name was mentioned;
but there was no doubt as to the direction in which the guesswork would
point; and Archibald rode home, puzzling over the degree of his
responsibility for Ezra Watts. He was inclined to think with the rest of
the community, that Ezra was the barn burner; yet, though the suspected
man had been closely watched, nothing had been discovered to connect him
with the fires, except that sometimes he had been seen abroad on the
nights when they occurred. More than that was needed for justification
of rough handling and if the law could not reach Ezra, the best thing
that could happen for both him and the community would be for him to go
away before any violent outbreak could occur. Probably he would be only
too glad to go, if he were warned of the danger and given money to
smooth his way.