“It’ll be over before dinner ’n’ I’ll only do it thorough once a week,” she called after him encouragingly, as he went away down the sunlit slope where the daisies made way for him.
Mrs. Neal, his nearest neighbor, who was working in her garden as he skirted her side yard, dropped her trowel and strolled over to the fence when she saw him coming.
She was a sociable woman. He had discovered that before and resented it. Above all things in the world he had wanted to escape from people, to be left alone with his bruised soul; but, oddly enough, he was not conscious of bruises this morning, was not even conscious of a soul, which is quite as things should be on a June morning.
And so, to the waiting woman’s surprise, he took his pipe from his mouth, bade her a blithe good morning, rested his elbows comfortably on the top rail of the fence beside her own, and smiled into her broad, astonished, and kindly face.
“My land,” said the woman. “Was it as bad as all that?”
“It was,” admitted the man.
“And here I was thinking it was a bad disposition. Just goes to show that you never can tell.”
Mrs. Neal’s tone was self-reproachful. Her face had taken on creases still more kindly.
“I told Peggy she’d got her work cut out for her; but she said if you was grouchy you needed seein’ to all the more, and that bein’ grouchy was, like as not, just not bein’ used to bein’ pleasant; but I didn’t suppose she’d get you used to bein’ pleasant as quick as this.”
Archibald’s grin held no hurt vanity. He had evidently made an uncommonly bad first impression, but his neighbor was plainly ready and willing to reverse her judgment.