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The day came when Ezra was well enough to shift for himself and he gave every one—including Pegeen—to understand that he was glad to be rid of intruders.
“It’ll seem mighty good to get back to living as I please,” he said, as Peg, calmly autocratic to the last, gave him a dose of medicine before joining the doctor who was waiting to drive her home.
“I’ll bet it doesn’t.” She was amiable but positive. “You’ll hate it and I’m sorry you’ve got to do it, but I think maybe you’ll take better care of yourself than you did. Don’t forget your medicine after meals. If you get into any trouble I’ll come over and see to you.”
Ezra grunted derision, but she held out her hand and smiled up at him so whole-heartedly that he was surprised into an answering smile.
“You’re a queer one,” he said, “but you’re better than most.” It was grudging, inadequate, but coming from Ezra it was glowing tribute, and Peggy went out to the car in high spirits.
“I’m going to miss Ezra,” she said as the doctor tucked her in. “Of course he isn’t like Mr. Archibald, but I’ve got real fond of him.”
“Holy Smoke!” commented Dr. Fullerton.
“I have,” she insisted, “and I’m sure now that he likes me. He said I was better than most. That’s a lot for Ezra to say.”
“It’s impassioned eulogy,” said the doctor,—“but, Peg, speaking in cold blood, as doctor to nurse and without any of Ezra’s overflowing sentiment, I’ll admit that you are better than most. You really ought to be trained for a nurse, Peg.”
The small girl’s face flushed with happiness at the praise.
“It’d be lovely,” she said, “but I can’t, because I’m going to be married and I guess my own children will keep me pretty busy. I do hope they’ll have measles and whooping cough and all those things early. It’s so much better, isn’t it? And it’ll take a lot of time for eight of them to have everything.”
“That’s a fact. It will,” agreed the doctor. “You’re counting on eight?”
She nodded.
“Yes; I guess that’s enough unless you have perfect stacks of money. I want them all to go to school. School’s so lovely. I’d have liked awfully to go more, but there was always somebody to see to.”
Dr. Fullerton gave her arm an affectionate little squeeze.
“You know more than any of the rest of us as it is, Peg. Schooling you would have been ‘gilding refined gold and painting the lily.’ I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll undertake to see all eight of those children through whooping cough and measles and any blamed thing they choose to have and I won’t charge you a cent for it.”
Pegeen looked immeasurably relieved.
“That’ll be perfectly splendid,” she said happily. “Doctor’s bills do make lots of trouble.”
“They trouble the doctors.”
Dr. Fullerton grinned ruefully as he admitted it. A very large percentage of his patients showed absolutely no interest in his bills when he sent them.
Archibald and Wiggles were waiting for Pegeen at the meadow bars and each welcomed her after his own fashion. Wiggles was the more exuberant of the two. Only by sheer force was he kept from meeting a sudden and violent death in his wild effort to climb into the car before it stopped; and when the small girl finally stood by the roadside, he gave an exhibition of hysterical affection ill befitting one of his stern sex. Archibald merely took his pipe from his mouth and came forward to lift Peg from the car, with a quiet, “Well, here you are, Nurse O’Neill,” but the satisfaction in his face was good to see, and Dr. Fullerton chuckled over it as he went spinning on down the Valley.
“That youngster has lit on her feet,” he told himself contentedly. “Hanging over those bars watching for her, for an hour, I’ll bet. Wonder how much money the man has anyway.”
Meanwhile the three he had left behind on the roadside were going happily up the meadow slope to the shack. Archibald and Peg went hand in hand and, as usual, she accommodated her pace to his long easy stride by a system of two steps and a skip, while Wiggles gyrated excitedly about the two, yelping his joy.
“Glad to come home, child?” the man asked.
She squeezed his hand lovingly.
“I’m so glad I’d like to do what Wiggles is doing,” she said. “I feel as if I’d been away two months instead of two weeks.”
“Make it two years,” he amended. “That’s the length of time I’ve spent missing you. What did I do before you happened to me, Peg?”
“You needed seeing to. Gracious! You’ve been doing something to the house!”
He looked just a trifle embarrassed, doubtful.
“See here, Peg,” he said bluntly. “I never did like your trotting back and forth night and morning and looking after Mrs. Benderby at all sorts of unearthly hours.”
“That doesn’t hurt me,” she protested.
“Well, it hurt me and things are different now. I didn’t tell you about Mrs. Benderby because I thought it might worry you, but Dr. Fullerton says she has to stop going out by the day.—Not seriously ill, you know, but she’ll have to let up on very hard work.”
“Oh, dear, isn’t that dreadful.” Pegeen’s eyes were flooded with anxiety. “Isn’t it lucky I’ve got some money? The rent’s seven dollars and then meals—but I’ll have plenty this summer and then maybe she’ll be better, and—”
“Bless your dear heart,” Archibald interrupted. “You aren’t going to spend your money on her. I’ll look out for her—glad to—only it seemed to me—she’s got used to being up here now and seems to like it and she could relieve you of the cooking—and I don’t know how you feel about it, but I thought I’d like to have both of you stay here with me. I had the carpenter knock up a couple of rooms at the side of the shack.”
She stopped in the path and stared at him, shining eyed, wondering.
“Oh, my stars!” she said in a hushed little voice. “My stars!”
“Don’t you like the idea?” he asked anxiously.
“Like it!” The wonder in her face broke up into little ripples of delight. “Like it! Why it’s perfectly splendid! It’s the loveliest thing I ever heard of! I could sit down and cry the way I did when the larkspur happened—but think of you wanting us—Mrs. Benderby too! And everybody thought you didn’t like folks at all!”
“I thought so myself,” admitted Archibald; “but you see I hadn’t ever really known anyone.”
“Well, I’ve got to run. I’ve simply got to. Walking’s no good when you feel the way I do, and I can’t wait to see the new rooms.”
She scampered off up the path, with Wiggles barking joyously before her, and when Archibald reached the shack at a more leisurely gait she had inspected the new rooms and was sitting in the living-room, Wiggles at her feet, Boots in her lap, and Spunky on her shoulder, while Mrs. Benderby stood with her hands on her hips looking down adoringly at the Small Person in the chair.
“I’m home! I’m home! I’m home!” Pegeen was singing to the laughing baby.
“We’re all home now,” Archibald said, as he stood in the doorway and looked at her. “You are the home, Peggy child.”
Supper that night was a party. The Smiling Lady had sent John over with a big bunch of glorious blue larkspur. “Peg’s ‘glad’ flower is the flower for you all, to-night,” said the word that came with it.
And Mrs. Benderby had made a cake with pink icing and an amazing design in little red candies around the edge of it, and there was ice cream, a contribution from Mrs. Neal.
“It’s like a birthday—only I never had this kind of a birthday,” said Pegeen, as she beamed across the blue flowers that, for all their gladness, were not so glad as her face, while Mrs. Benderby, torn between her ideal of the solemnity appropriate in waiting on a city gentleman and her sympathetic joy, hovered round the table with relays of hot biscuit and fried chicken, and Wiggles, having been surreptitiously presented with a chicken leg, by Peg—a thing entirely against her own rules—sat on his haunches and begged for more.
Boots was asleep in the hammock and Spunky, true to feline type, assumed a profound indifference and sat on the hearth with her front paws folded cozily under her and a bored look on her little gray face.
“You are going to have this kind of birthdays from now on—only more so,” Archibald announced. “This is just an unbirthday party. Wait till you see your birthday party. When is your birthday, Peg?”
“September—the fifteenth. I’m glad I wasn’t born in winter. Spring would have been nicest. I’d have liked being born along with everything else.”
Archibald dissented.
“Wouldn’t have done at all,” he said firmly. “You were special—extra special. Autumn needed you to keep it from being sad.”
Mrs. Benderby wouldn’t allow Pegeen to help with the dishes.
“Other nights, maybe, if you want to, but not to-night,” she insisted. So, as the afterglow faded and the stars came out to look at a blithe new moon Archibald and Peg sat once more on their familiar doorstep. For a time they were both silent, listening to the night noises, watching the play of moonlight and starlight across the meadow and the clutching shadows on the wood’s edge.
“I wonder if Ezra took his medicine after supper,” Pegeen said suddenly. “I’d most forgotten about him. Being terribly happy’s sort of selfish, isn’t it?”
“Not when you are making other people happy by being happy, and you are doing that.”
She pressed her cheek against his shoulder for an instant.
“Well, being so happy was what made me remember Ezra. I suppose he doesn’t know what it feels like. You see, he can’t; because he doesn’t love anybody. You can’t have the real, soaked-in, choky kind of being happy unless you love somebody a whole lot and feel sure the somebody loves you. I tried awfully hard to love Ezra. I did honestly, and I did get real fond of him, but you can’t exactly love anybody that won’t be lovable. You can feel sorry and kind and everything like that, but loving’s different. I guess God’s the only one that can go right ahead and love everybody no matter what they’re like. It doesn’t make any difference about sinners. I could love sinners just as quick as scat, if they were nice sinners that would love back; but I’m afraid God will have to do the loving with Ezra. I can’t get any further than liking him, even if he does swear and act ugly. I do hope he’ll take his medicine and change the sheets.”
“Well, he won’t,” said Archibald encouragingly. “Ezra’s now engaged in going back to the blanket literally and figuratively, but don’t fret about him, Peg. We’ll do all we can for him, but you’re back on your old job now and you’ll have to give your whole time and attention to seeing to me.”
“And Mrs. Benderby and Boots and Wiggles and Spunky,” added Pegeen. “Isn’t it a lovely family!—and just think of my having you all right here together—not having to go away to see Mrs. Benderby or take Boots home nights or anything. I used to hate leaving you and sometimes I’d wake up in the night and worry for fear you’d get sick here all alone with nobody to see to you, and I’d always hurry as fast as I could, coming up in the morning for fear something had happened.”
“Bless you!” Archibald rumpled the thick black hair with an affectionate hand. “I hated being left alone myself, not because I was afraid of anything happening but because the place was forlorn without you. Peggy, Peggy! How you do creep into hearts and settle down to housekeeping in them!”