“We have that—” She was all sweet apology. “Ellen and I’ve been taking liberties. It was Peggy’s big day, you know. We couldn’t let her come home and do her work as though it were an ordinary evening, so we put up a basket of supper—and we’ve cooked some biscuits in your oven—and you’ll forgive us, won’t you? Sure, you’ve had a whole day of playing Fairy Godfather. You couldn’t grudge us our wee bit offering at the quiet end of the day.”
There was nothing he could have grudged her when she looked at him like that. ’Twas not in the heart of man to deal grudgingly with the Smiling Lady.
“If you please, miss, the biscuits will be overdone,” warned Ellen, and, a moment later, Archibald was looking across the table into a face bewilderingly sweet, while Pegeen, still wearing her beloved hat, though she had reluctantly furled the pink parasol, sat between her two best beloveds and beamed impartially, first on one and then on the other.
“Let’s say grace,” she urged. “It’s the graciest supper I ever had ’n’ it seems as if we ought.”
Archibald looked aghast; but the Smiling Lady took the suggestion as a good one.
“Dear God,” she said,—and she spoke casually, as friend to very present friend—“make us all very happy and very loving and very grateful on big days and little days.”
“’Specially little days, ’cause we can do it ourselves on big days,” amended Pegeen, as she reached for a biscuit.
V
Mrs. Neal saved Pegeen the trouble of keeping her promise to run down and tell her all about the day in Pittsfield.
The breakfast dishes were washed at the shack, but Pegeen was busily tidying the living-room, and Archibald was only half-way through his after-breakfast smoke when the bulky form of their neighbor appeared in the doorway.