Peg and I had been worthily busy with my letters for full ten minutes. She was, for her, very quiet, almost indeed to the line of a grave sadness, which after all should be the aftermath of those tears of the day before.
If Peg were wordless, I, on my side, sat equally without conversation. We made tongueless company; but for that very reason went with all the more earnestness to the letters as though they were the seeds of this silence.
“Well?” said Peg, with a suddenness, her hands in her lap. I stared. “Well?” she repeated. Then, when I said nothing, she would elaborate a bit. “Well, watch-dog, what would you have? You know these letters were the merest pretext for me to come.”
“Why, then,” said I, made desperate because she snatched away my disguise, “why, then, I was in a fret to look on you.”
“Was it that?”
“Sometimes I fear your husband does not wholly understand you.” It took courage to go thus far; it marked a point mightily forward of any attained to in former talks.
Peg gave me one of those fathomless looks, narrowing her brow whimsically. My bluntness had not dashed her spirit, at any rate; indeed, it would seem to have raised it.
“You fear my husband does not understand me?” repeated Peg. Now she paused an endless while, her eyes reading mine like print. I could feel her searching me for my last promise of expression. “You fear my husband does not understand me. And is he to be the only one? Is it there the roll-call ends? If that were true, I might sustain myself.” For all a shadowy, vague piquancy of brow, Peg got this off wearily enough, and I still prisoner to her eyes. Now, after a moment, her vivacity would mount a little. “You are right,” she went on, “I am not much understood.” A smile peeped from the dimple in her cheek. “What would you think, watch-dog, were I to give thick folk lessons in myself—expound myself to dunces as your pedagogue gives lessons in a book?”
“The lessons you propose should be marvellously sweet,” said I. Then, with some tincture of my better courage: “By my soul's hope! I should be sure to go to school for those lessons.”
“Ah! do you challenge me?” cried Peg. Now it would be the old Peg. “From this hour you begin your studies. Life shall be a never-ending lesson, and Peg the lesson.”