Then a shadow drifted across the rapture and she sighed.
“Well?” questioned the man.
“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking.”
“Thinking what?” he insisted.
She looked very uncomfortable, wriggled uneasily in her chair.
“It’s Miss Moran,” she said, at last. “She was always crazy to have a club, here in the Valley—a neighborhood house she called it just like you did. She used to talk and talk and plan and plan; but she didn’t have money enough. I was just thinking how lovely it would have been if—”
She was on the borderland of unspoken things and afraid to go further; but Archibald opened her way.
“See here, Peg,” he said abruptly. “You mustn’t make any mistake about my feeling for Miss Moran. I’m head over heels in love with her. You’re too clever not to know that and I don’t mind your knowing it; but, because I can’t marry her, is no reason why you and I shouldn’t talk about her exactly as we always did. If she’d like this club, there’s one more big reason for putting it across, and the more she helps with it, the better I’ll be satisfied; only you are giving the club house to the Valley. Just remember that. Now we’ll go and talk the thing over with Miss Moran.”
His frankness cleared the air for himself as well as for the child; and when they found the Smiling Lady on her veranda and told her about the plan, the vague chill that had seemed to envelop her melted quite away before their enthusiasm.
“Splendid!” she cried eagerly. “Splendid! How you have come on with your neighboring, Mr. Archibald! I prophesied you’d make something of him, Peggy.”