“Your own people?” the man echoed.
“Yes; they are mine now. The hills and the sky and the fields and the woods began my cure—taught me that beauty hadn’t died because I was unhappy, but it was neighboring that taught me to be happy again. We’re a selfish lot with our loves, aren’t we? I had been quite contented with my half dozen out of the world. The rest didn’t count for me. They were just chorus—merry villagers, you know—quite unimportant except for stage effect. Then when I was left alone, I found that I needed those others—and that they needed me. After I learned that lesson, I put away sorrow. One doesn’t forget, of course. One misses always; but one loves and helps and is glad. It’s a joyful old world, isn’t it?”
“In spots.” The man’s voice was dubious.
“Wait until you’ve adopted the Valley,” advised the girl, laughingly. “You’ve made a splendid beginning with Peggy. In the meantime, Ellen’s bringing hot scones and more plum jam. Who says this is a vale of tears?”
“It has its smiling moments,” confessed the doubting one.
They talked of many things there beside the flickering fire.
The girl and her father had roamed the world in the days before he left her.
“We were alone together after Mother died,” she said, “and he was restless always, though he kept laughter on his lips; so we went here and there, drifting back to New York now and again. He was the best of comrades and welcome everywhere. Dear old Dad! All the world made friends with him. He was Irish. Did I tell you that before? Clever, irresponsible, adorable Irish. Peggy and I have a bond in our Irish blood, but I’ve none of the brogue. The pity of it! Father’s was creamy, always. You should have heard him tell an Irish story—and seen him tell it! No wonder it’s easy for me to be happy even now that he’s gone from me. I learned the way of it from him, though all the time he’d the broken heart over my mother’s going.”
She was talking half to herself now, and smiling into the fire as though she had forgotten the listening man.
“We were in New York when he went away from me,” she said. “I couldn’t believe that he was very ill. He had always been so alive—so splendidly, buoyantly alive. It seemed to me that, in the end, he would laugh at death and beat it off; but he knew.