“Isn’t it splendid,” the small girl said breathlessly—“going off on an adventure this way, just you and me in a buggy. I’ve been twice before, but in a wagon both times. That was nice too, but a buggy’s so much eleganter. I do hope they’ll all see us. Mrs. Benderby’s washing at the Pratts’ to-day. I told her we were going to start at nine, so she’ll be looking out for us and like as not she’s told everybody else, so they’ll all be watching. Folks here in the Valley are awfully interested in things and they’ve been sort of excited about my going up to take care of you. You see they couldn’t tell how it’d turn out, you being from New York and an artist and not smiling at anybody, and all that, but now when they see me driving to Pittsfield with you in a buggy and you looking so jolly and nice, they’ll know that everything’s come out beautifully. I knew it would all the time ’n’ Miss Moran said:
“ ‘Peg, everybody knows how to smile at the world, but some people are dreadfully out of practice.’ She said when you found out there were other folks in the world beside yourself maybe you’d smile at them, and now you’re beginning to do it. When you get real well acquainted with everybody here in the Valley, I shouldn’t wonder if you’d simply grin. There’s Mrs. Ransom and Sally on their side stoop, watching for us!”
She bounced joyously on the hard leather seat and waved both hands wildly toward two women, who waved answering salutes.
“Mr. Ransom’s a deacon and he won’t let Sally go anywhere except to church, or have beaux or anything. Don’t you think it’s a shame—and she’s pretty as a picture too, and all the boys are perfectly crazy about her. Her mother’s just like a scared little white rabbit—pale blue eyes and wrinkly little nose and everything. The neighbors say she’s afraid to breathe and Sally doesn’t stand up to her father because he takes it out on her mother and Mrs. Ransom’s so afraid. Miss Moran’s about the only one that dares to go there much, but she isn’t afraid of anything and Deacon Ransom can’t be perfectly nasty to her. Nobody can. Why, even Bill Briggs, that drinks so and swears something awful at everybody, he’s got to be real friendly with Miss Moran. She hurt her ankle one day climbing a fence down by the back road and Bill Briggs happened to come along. He wasn’t so very drunk, but anybody else would have been scared half to death of him. Miss Moran just upped and called to him:
“ ‘Oh, Mr. Briggs,’ she said, ‘I’m so glad you came along. I’ve hurt myself and I’ll have to get you to help me home.’ He told folks that he cussed once or twice from habit, but she looked so nice and friendly and so glad he was there and so sure he was going to fix things for her, that he went over and helped her up and took her home—carried her the last part of the way—and when they got to the house she made him come in and have dinner and now he’s sobered up some and he works for her a good deal, but he doesn’t talk hardly at all when he’s around there. He can’t talk without swearing and he doesn’t like to swear before her, so you’d most think he was deaf and dumb when he’s working at her place.”
The drive down the Valley was a continuous performance of waving greetings, and running commentary. Pegeen did not gossip. She simply overflowed; and Archibald found the people of whom she talked taking very definite shape in his mind. He felt distinctly interested in pretty Sally Ransom and profane Bill Briggs and Ginsy Shalloway, the seamstress, who went around sewing and knew all about everybody, and Ezra Watts who wasn’t respectable and was suspected of stealing everything that disappeared.
Really, the country wasn’t the lonely place Archibald had always believed it to be. It was full of people and of drama. And though the man had run away from women and men and vowed himself to misanthropic seclusion, his Valley neighbors seen through Pegeen’s friendly, tolerant eyes seemed likable folk. Even Ezra Watts, the not respectable, got the benefit of Peg’s doubt. “It’s handy to have somebody to lay things on,” she said. “’N’ I guess Ezra gets credit for lots of things he doesn’t do—like when Mr. Sanderson was sure his saw and auger had been stolen and then one day old Granny Sanderson had a dream that they were under the bed springs and sure enough there they were on the cords, where Mr. Sanderson had left them himself when he’d been fixing the bed. Ezra’s got a terrier dog, Bingo, that loves him like everything, and Miss Moran says when Bingo turns his back on Ezra, she’ll believe the man’s as bad as he’s painted, but not till then. It’s awfully hard for Miss Moran to believe anybody’s bad, ’n’ I guess mostly they aren’t.”
On the main street of Pisgah, the little village at the end of the Valley, Pegeen suddenly bounced higher than usual on the buggy seat.
“Oh—please—there’s Jimmy. Oh, do stop, Mr. Archibald.”
A sturdy, barefooted boy sat on the stone wall under a spreading maple tree, whittling nonchalantly and with an air of profound indifference to passersby.