Once there, however, I was sore put to it to show reason for my conduct, of the rather extraordinary character of which one caught some glint in the expression of amazement that made wide the eyes of Pigeon-breast and all but set his mouth ajar.
Now the truth was, that anonymous letter to Peg, and which lay safe locked in my desk, had ever stuck in my craw. I said it was a woman's hand of writing, but I was by no means sure. Knowing hardly a baker's dozen of folk in town, there were not many for my thoughts to run upon in this scurvy business; and I had had it now and then on my mind—the more since Pigeon-breast had broken into the trouble at an early hour as the open ill-wisher of Peg—to call this fine gentleman's attention to the missive with a view to asking him was he its architect. In my present frame of hunger to lay hands on a flesh and blood enemy of Peg's—one of my own rude sex—and I suppose because Pigeon-breast was a foppish creature of scents and ribbons who might lean to feminine methods of attack, I put the question to him. Fairly, I blurted it out, and I fear with nothing of fineness or diplomacy.
“Me?” cried the outraged Pigeon-breast in a shrill treble through a sense of injustice; “me?” he cried again, starting back a pace, perhaps from savageries which looked out upon him from my eye, “never! On my soul! to think of such a thing! Me write an anonymous letter! Why, sir,” and poor Pigeon-breast chirped forth the words like a mouse that has been wronged, “why, sir, should a man say so, I'd have him to the field, sir, and cut his throat.”
There was no doubt of it; the insulted Pigeon-breast was not the author of that letter. No man might simulate his indignant excitement. I made amends handsomely, and for the first time Pigeon-breast and I shook hands. There was no harm in the creature save that he was a bandbox fool.
It ran well towards evening when I went about in the conservatory culling a basket of flowers for Peg. This I was wont to do each day, since the blossoms went otherwise to waste; for the place was a mere lair and nest of masculinity, with the General's niece gone home, and none about save the General and myself—and I might add Earl, but he had no wit save for canvas and colors, and no thought except from morning till night to paint the General's portrait. The General and I were no mighty consumers of nosegays; wherefore, as I've said, and to save the flowers from loss, I was used each day to cut an armful of the best and bravest and send them across to Peg's, where they would give her smile for smile and dare their beauties against her own from every corner.
While I was roving right and left among the blossoms, the General came in with long strides. There was a kind of angry hurry to him, and he carried a letter in his hand.
“Here is something to make you curse your kind,” cried he. Then, seeing my flowers: “How now! how now! and when was Mars a gardener and has the world turned girl! These should be thin days and bloodless, when the starkest saber that ever rode on my bridle hand—he whom the Creeks called the 'Big Death'—loiters with woman's wares and learns to twine a posy.”
“They are for Peg,” said I, more nettled than I showed, for it struck me he talked a deal about nothing at all.
“Oh, they are for Peg,” he repeated, his glance whimsical, yet narrow and intent; “they are for Peg!” Then just as I was warming to the brink of knowing what he would mean by that, he harked back suddenly to the letter in his clutch. “Come with me. Here is a word from that very Reverend Doctor Ely about your Peg, and we must concert steps to prove him the false defamer that he is.”