Her lips drooped woefully at the thought—but reassurances came quickly. “He says he’s such an awful dub at Latin that he won’t be ready for college for years ’n’ years. That’s lucky anyway.”
The road left the Valley behind and climbed skyward between lines of wonderfully built stone walls that had little in common with the vagabond, straggling stone heaps that marked property confines in the Valley. Behind the walls orchards clung to the sloping hillsides—old orchards that gave evidences of early care and training but were lapsing from grace in their latter days. They had not been able to live up to the walls that enclosed them, yet the broad spreading trees had a dignity of their own. They were decaying but they had given bountifully in their day. One felt that.
“The men who built these walls were in earnest,” Archibald said reflectively as he eyed the width and height of them, their perfect alignment, their broad level tops.
Pegeen nodded.
“Shakers,” she explained. “I guess they’re always awfully in earnest, only they used to build fences ’n’ now they mostly pray. You see there don’t seem to be many men with them now and women have got to pray when they’re in earnest. They can’t build walls.”
“That may be one way of building walls.”
She saw what he meant. Pegeen usually saw what people meant. That was one reason she was such a comforting small person.
“Yes, I know, but it’s sort of nice to leave walls standing up to show for years ’n’ years. Women bake ’n’ scrub ’n’ wash dishes ’n’ the next day it’s all gone and has to be done over again. The Shaker women are working like sixty and they’re perfectly splendid at praying, but the farms are running down. I do think it’s sort of discouraging being a woman—but I like it.”
“Bless your heart!” There was a tenderness for more than the child in Archibald’s eyes as he looked down into the sensitive, glowing face—a sudden tenderness for all the dear women who found their womanhood discouraging, yet gloried in it.
Faces looked out through the shining windows of the great brick buildings as the man and girl drove through the Shaker village—sweet, kindly faces that smiled in return to Pegeen’s waving hand.