The Very Small Person started for the kitchen after another cup of coffee.
“Why, she’s the Smiling Lady,” she called back across her shoulder, as she went.
The words were left hanging on the air, and the little room seemed the brighter for them. Archibald said them over to himself softly.
“The Smiling Lady!” Had another Mona Lisa come to light in this Peaceful Valley?
“Pegeen,” he asked as the small girl came with his coffee, “who is the Smiling Lady?”
She set the full cup down carefully.
“Oh, that’s just a name for her,” she explained. “I made it for her when she first came, ’n’ it fitted her so well that the others took it up, ’n’ now she’s the Smiling Lady all up ’n’ down the Valley; but her other name’s Moran.”
“And does she smile prettily, Peggy?”
“It just melts the heart out of you, sir, it does—but she isn’t always smiling, you know—not with her lips. It’s a sort of a smile that goes with her like the words to a tune. ’N’ her hair’s all bright ’n’ ripply ’n’ smiley, ’n’ she walks so light, ’n’ she just has a way with her. When she comes into a room you feel as if birds had begun singing there.”
Archibald leaned back in his chair and looked at the slip of a girl, with the thin, expressive face in which now adoration glowed warmly.