Pegeen

by Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd

IV

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.