“A thumb-biting, eye-poking class, I gather?”
“Forceful, let us put it—and yet so helpless, poor things! How is Pegeen?”
“The connection is obvious,” Archibald confessed. “I am wax in her hands. Within a week there won’t be a paint brush in the shack that I can call my own. She’s going to keep me tidy if she has to drive me from home in order to do it. In fact, she did drive me from home this morning. She’s cleaning.”
“She’ll take very good care of you,” said the Smiling Lady, “and how she will love doing it! She’ll mother you as if you were Jerry’s age. Peggy was born for mothering.”
She had risen as she spoke.
“Sandy and I must take all these babies home before they begin clamoring for food,” she said lightly, “and I haven’t a doubt but that Peggy is watching the meadow path for you. Give her my love.”
She took it for granted that he knew her as she knew him. Pegeen was sure to have talked of her and so why bother with formalities? Yet, in spite of her frank acceptance of him, Archibald did not offer to walk home with her.
There was a definite finality about her leave-taking, a door quietly shut. Evidently this unconventional Young Woman made her own laws and limitations, and Archibald, being no dullard in feminine psychology, realized that the man who presumed upon her casual friendliness would be likely to find the door permanently closed. So he stood quietly and watched her going away across the sunshiny glade.
She walked as she spoke, as she looked, as she smiled, with a fine freedom, a blithe assurance; and though the figure that swayed so lightly as it went away between the birches was girlishly slender, there was a subtle hint of strength and vigor in its flowing lines.
As Archibald looked, she stooped to one of the babies, and the man drew a sharp breath of appreciation, noting with an artist’s eye, the gracious curves of her breast under the clinging muslin blouse, the rhythmic length of limb, the modeling of the bare forearms, the well-set head.