“This is Mr. Archibald,” Pegeen announced with an air of proud proprietorship.
The woman gave him a thin cold hand. The chill of it made him peer more closely at her through the starlit gloom, but he could see her face only in dim outlines. Scanty hair brushed smoothly back from the forehead and fastened in a tight knob at the back of the head left hollow temples in view and below them Archibald made out sunken cheeks and the angles of a sharp chin. But it was the woman’s figure that emphasized most clearly the chill of the bony hand. Even in the starlight, the sunken chest and rounded shoulders, the sagging droop of the whole body told their tale of hard work and physical unfitness and utter weariness.
“I’m glad to meet you,” Mrs. Benderby was saying. “Peg’s told me how wonderful good you’ve been to her and I think a sight of Peg. I’d ought to.”
There was weariness in the voice too, yet it strove for a brisk cheerfulness that was evidently its natural note.
Something tugged suddenly at Archibald’s heartstrings. Life was too hard for women.
“Yes; you and I couldn’t do without Pegeen,” he said. The friendly warmth of his voice affected the tired little woman as had the warm strength of his hand-clasp. There was something about Peg’s Mr. Archibald, she admitted to herself—something that cheered one up a bit. That “you and I” had a folksy sort of ring. He wasn’t stuck up if he did come from New York.
She smiled in the dark and though he could not see the smile he heard it in her voice.
“When you get used to having Peg around, nothing goes right without her,” she said. “Seems as if she always knew what you needed or wanted before you did. She spoils people, Peg does—gets ’em so they can’t live alone and most of us has to live alone sooner or later—even when there’s plenty of folks living in the same house with us.”
Archibald nodded. He had lived alone “with plenty of folks” and he knew what she meant.
“Won’t you sit down, sir?” Mrs. Benderby asked. “We’ll go indoors if you say, but it’s kind of cool and restful out here in the dark. I like being in the dark, evenings. You can’t see things you’d ought to get up and do.”