With what further raillery the General might have entertained himself I came not to know, for word was brought to him, at this nick, of ones who awaited his coming in the cabinet room. As he went away he called back to Peg, where she still abode in her leathern chair:
“Then it is settled and made. I shall be at your reception, to the grinding shock of gossips and the disorder of my presidential robes; also, you are to dine and dance in the White House whenever you sweetly will.”
“Where should have lodged more kindness for me than I now find here?” cried Peg, when the General was quite gone forth of the room. Then raising her warm eyes to mine where I sat wondering, now cold, now hot, would she go, or would she stay to talk with me, she gazed upon me with a steady, friendly look, which, for all it lacked of distance or any spirit of resentment, yet bred within me a feeling of confusion. I knew not how to meet it, and I could find no word to say. “And now,” said Peg, after a pause, but very kindly, “let us have a fair moment of friendship. No,” she went on, stopping me with her hand as I was beginning to stumble forward upon an apology for my ill words against Eaton, “no; let me talk. You have no genius of explanation; you would speak only to worsen things. Besides, you dwell in the same darkness now you ever did.”
“And it was to say that,” I interjected, for I was bound to some remark, “I started to speak. It was to tell you how I had no close knowledge of your husband and owned no right of information to criticise him.”
“Watch-dog!” cried Peg, motioning with little hands for silence, “watch-dog, will you have done?”
There was something of pain and reproach in this to stop me as though I had been planet-struck. Nor could I determine Peg's feeling, nor catch the color of it in a least of shade. For the most, I felt amazement, and was set back by the plain agitation of her, an agitation greater than was to have been looked for in one who came solely to pardon me those trespasses against good decent taste.
Peg called herself together with a shake of the head that had for one piquant effect the whipping of her shock of curls about her face, and leaving them a tangle to fall forward on her shoulders.
“Hear me,” went on Peg, brightening, and peering out on me in an arch way through her curls; “you are guilty of no wrong save the wrong of incredible dullness. Therefore you are to offer no defence. Even your dullness should have been a virtue in my eyes, since it spoke only of your honor, and told of the lofty place I hold in your regard.” Now I could see how Peg was at least accepting all I had said, and not one part only, and would give me credit for a compliment to herself, while she refused my strictures upon Eaton. “Observe, then; I have resolved we two shall be good friends. Better friends than before, because better to understand one another. And our trouble was my fault, too, not yours. Nor had I one right foot to go upon.”
“Now, that is the maddest charity of error!” cried I.
“It is not, I say,” returned Peg, her eyes beginning to shine with the first flavor of my opposition. “I say it is not. You had done nothing, said nothing; while I—why, then I hated you for having eyes of lead. But we will amend that.” Here Peg turned pleasantly brisk. “We have been too much abroad with mistakes. We have made you too old and me too young in our dealings. There shall be a change, and you and I hereafter are to consider ourselves as folk of even years, each with the other. It is but right, watchdog, for though you have no learning on that point, it is none the less true that a woman of twenty-two is very old and very wise, while a man of forty-four is for his youth and guilelessness, or I should have said dullness, a creature insupportable. Yes, watch-dog, for your ignorance you are insupportable; but I forgive you, since it is your only defect.” And here Peg recovered her old gay smile, and with that my heart came home again to peace.