There was a ring of pride in the jesting voice, a glow of pride in the smiling face. Richard Meredith, watching her from the hammock, noticed both. She was glad for the Valley, but there was more gladness beyond that; gladness and pride and—yes, there was tenderness too. It meant much to her that her people were to have their neighborhood house; but it meant even more to her that this one man was to give it to them, that they had found their way to his heart, and that he was finding his way to theirs. Meredith’s face gave no sign of anything save civil interest; but he drew back a little further into the shadow of the vines that clambered over the veranda trellis, and watched the girl and the man who leaned toward each other in the white moonlight, talking eagerly and with an intimate understanding that was new to him but prehistoric to them.
They altogether forgot him, when they went into the lamp-lighted room to figure on changes in the club house; but, as he sat there in the shadow, feeling oddly old and tired, a little figure slipped out through the French windows and tucked herself cozily into the hammock beside him.
“Which do you think would be nicer to have—a piano or a phonograph?” Pegeen asked confidentially, gathering him, as a matter of course, into intimacy of discussion and planning.
The man smiled in the dusk. She was so small and sweet and friendly and—though that he could not know—so sure he needed seeing to.
“I’ll give you both, for your neighborhood house, Pegeen,” he said—but added quickly, “if Mr. Archibald doesn’t object.”
“Why, he’d be glad,” she insisted stoutly, though back in her own mind there was a doubt. “That’s perfectly sweet of you. Oh, dear, it does seem as if God must have been working on that club for years and years. Everything’s going so beautifully. Only Deacon Ransom’ll have a fit about the billiard table. He won’t fit hard enough to keep him away though, and Miss Moran says he’s just got to let Sally come. I wish she’d get a beau down there and run off with him. Honestly I do. I’d help—if he’s nice. Do you know, I think a piano and a phonograph’s an awful lot for you to give. I wouldn’t want anything but the phonograph, but you see the mothers are so proud if their daughters can play some pieces and when there’s an entertainment, they always want the girls to show off; so it seems as if we really did need a piano. I’m going to tell everybody that you thought it up all by yourself, and Miss Moran didn’t have a thing to do with it. I shouldn’t wonder if you’d think of lots of things like that after a while. It isn’t a bit hard, after you once get started—not if anybody’s nice inside, like you. I guess city folks have to get new glasses to see country folks right, and some of them don’t ever bother to do it; but the awfully nice ones, like you and Miss Moran and Mr. Archibald, do. And then, after they put on the new glasses, they see so many kind things to do that they work like the very old Scratch to catch up with themselves.”
Meredith pulled the child’s head down against his shoulder and rumpled the thick curls with a gentle hand.
“It’s late for me to be changing glasses or ways, Peg,” he said softly; and his voice matched the gray of his hair. “Do you think I could ever catch up with myself, if I didn’t have Miss Moran to help me?”
Peggy reached up and gave the hand on her hair a loving little pat.
“Why, it’d be as easy as can be for you,” she assured him. “If you ever begin neighboring—in earnest, you know—I bet you’ll be perfectly splendid at it. Of course it’d be lovely to have Miss Moran help—but she wouldn’t need to. She started Mr. Archibald, but look at him now! I get jealous of the neighbors sometimes just for a minute; and he’s done most of it all by himself. Miss Moran hasn’t helped him atall, since you came.”