“My soul,” she commented cheerfully. “You folks don’t keep country hours, do you? Pa and I had breakfast pretty nigh three hours ago. I might ’a’ known you’d be backwards if I’d stopped to think; but, you see, I’d got through all my chores and it seemed as if the heft of the morning was over, so I just ran along up to see Peg’s new clothes. I allowed the pile was too big for her to bring down to me. I’m some big myself but I c’n navigate handier than a lot of boxes and bundles can. You said you was coming down this morning to tell me all about everything, Peg, but I thought I could see and hear at the same time. Don’t want to bother you, though. Maybe I’d rather come up later.”
Archibald uttered a prompt protest.
“You’re not bothering anybody, Mrs. Neal. We’re lazy but hospitable. At least I’m lazy. Peggy’s not; but she’s an indulgent person, so she doesn’t insist on ramping around very early in the mornings. It isn’t as if I were farming, you know. I can get at my painting any time I feel like it, and when I don’t feel like it I don’t do good painting; so there you are! No merit in my getting up with the early bird; my own special worm wouldn’t be out.”
Mrs. Neal settled into the chair he had pushed forward to her and chuckled comfortably.
“Sort of a lazy man’s job, ain’t it?” she said; “but it takes all sorts of work to keep the world moving and everybody happy. I guess there’s folks in the cities that like your kind of pictures. They look sort of daubed up and queer to me, though. Sitting over here, that one on the painting stand by the window don’t look like anything at all but a mess of greens.”
Pegeen turned indignant eyes upon the art critic.
“Why, Mrs. Neal! That’s a piece of the woods above Baker’s Spring, ’n’ it’s perfectly lovely. I can most smell the woodsy things growing.”
“Smell nothing!—without its turpentine!” Mrs. Neal was genial but firm in her opinion. “You ain’t got a call to be mad, Peg. Mr. Archibald don’t care. Didn’t I say there was folks that’d like his kind of pictures? I ain’t educated. That’s what’s the matter with me, and I know it, but there’s no use pretending I don’t like my pictures plain and clear and neat. You ain’t so awful educated either, but you’re different. You’ve got imagination to look with. I’ve only got far-sighted specs—and that young eye doctor over at Pittsfield made a bad guess on them too.”
“Fire away, Mrs. Neal,” laughed the painter. “I’ve known other people who didn’t like my pictures. Some day I’ll paint you a nice, clear, tidy one of your house and garden. I really can, you know.”
The visitor’s broad face beamed delight.