“Do you know,” she said to Mrs. Benderby that night, after she had knelt beside her bed for a long time. “I might exactly as well get up. I’m so terribly happy I can’t think of a single solitary thing to pray for.”
Richard Meredith stayed at the house under the maples on the night of the club house-warming; and when he came down to breakfast the next morning, he looked peculiarly tired and worn.
“You didn’t sleep well, Dick,” his hostess said reproachfully, as they went out to the veranda after breakfast.
“Well, no; not as well as usual. Too much festivity. The thing went off with a tremendous bang, didn’t it?”
She nodded laughing assent; but he noticed that she too showed signs of a wakeful night. Her eyes were tired and there were faint, purplish shadows beneath them.
“Wasn’t Pegeen adorable?” she said. A wave of tenderness swept from Meredith’s mouth to his eyes and tarried there.
“It’s chronic with Pegeen.” His voice, too, held tenderness. “I wonder what life will do with that big tender heart of hers.”
“Hurt it.”
It was seldom that the Smiling Lady was pessimistic. Meredith looked at her quickly and the tenderness in his face was not all for Pegeen.
“Yes,” he agreed, “and she’ll love her way straight through the hurt. I can’t believe that even life can be unrelentingly hard to Pegeen. Life isn’t often unrelentingly hard.”