“Why, I believe I have a few handsful somewhere about the house,” said Peg. “If it be those you are come to see, I shall have pleasure in directing you to my maid.”
Now when quite close I bent my slow eyes upon our little Peg. There she stood, a lamp of beauty! and never the sign of your diamonds or rubies about her—nothing of ornament save a rose my Jim had brought, and the little coral of my mother's which Peg took from the cabinet on that summer day. As she offered me her hand, she lifted up her face to mine. She gave me no word but the red blood showed in her cheek a match for my coral. Then her eyes fell; and next, with a heart full to foolishness of a joy that was like a mystery, I passed on to walk the air and join the General.
“Our victory was measureless,” declared the General, in the stiff manner of him who makes report, when late that night he and I were about our inevitable pipes in his room. The General would discuss Peg's reception. “Sir, it was absolute triumph. Do you know how Peg's function compared with those of the enemy? 'Quantity and quality' were her words; you remember that. Do you know on those two points, how our affair compared with those of Ingham and Berrien and Branch? You do not? Sir, you surprise me, and you to be a soldier whom I myself taught! Why! how are you to know when we win or lose if you keep no account of the fight? 'Quantity and quality,' mark you! that is the test.” The General was in towering spirit and as exalted of brow as one might wish to see. It was like the real war to him. “Now,” he went on, “I was of a mind to know results; I took measures for a count of noses, and a list of your folk who called at those four cabinet houses to-day. Sir, it may please you to hear that on both proposals of 'quality and quantity' Peg and you and I overpowered those Redsticks as ten would overpower one.”
The General smoked on in silent satisfaction; I said nothing, my mind being wholly taken with my coral on Peg's bosom, and never mark of diamond or ruby for a blemish to the rich beauty of her neck and face and the cataract of gold-black hair to fall about her shoulders.
“Peg is a grand girl!” mused the General. “It is pity, too; she should have been a man and a soldier. And then the pure taste of her! You have heard of a peck, more or less, of diamonds which Eaton brought on from the North? I looked to see them wreathed about Peg's neck or arms or fingers or wherever heaven meant they should go. And, mind you! not a trace of them. 'Why,' says our Peg, when I would question her, 'they were of such wondrous richness I thought it shame to wear them in my own drawing room—and me no more than a girl—and set them against older, better folk who would be my guests. It would have been to over-crow them, and as though I sought to pamper vanity at their cost. Wherefore, in compliment, I would not wear them, but put them all aside. Now, this bit of coral is better, since more modest. It was from a sweetheart, and is the one thing I love best of all the world.' Was there not fineness for you?” demanded the General. “Was there not magnanimity? What other woman between the poles could have withstood her hands from those gems? Or who, from mere kindness and to spare the women about her their own envy, would have thrust them away to don that coral trifle in their stead? A tavern's daughter, forsooth! Why, such a spirit would give a grace beyond her title to a duchess! I know of nothing more good or noble to tell the silken nature of our little Peg.”