Peggy Stewart at School

by Gabrielle E. Jackson

Under such circumstances the present climax is not surprising.

Peggy's whole life had in some respects been a contradiction and a cry for a girl's natural heritage—a mother's all-comprehending love. The love that does not wait to be told of the loved one's needs and happiness, but which lives only to foresee what is best for her and to bring it to pass, never mind at what sacrifice to self. Peggy had missed that love in her life and not all the other forms combined had compensated.

Until the previous year she had never felt this; nor could she have put it into words even at the present moment. She only knew that in Polly's companionship she had been very, very happy and that she was terribly lonely without her. That in Mrs. Harold she had found a friend whom she had learned to love devotedly and trust implicitly, and that in the brief time Mrs. Howland, Polly's mother, had been in Annapolis and at New London, she had caught a glimpse of a little world before undreamed of; a world peculiarly Polly's and her mother's and which no other human being invaded. Mrs. Howland had just such a little world for each of her daughters and for the son-in-law whom she loved so tenderly. It was a world sacred to the individual who dwelt therein with her. There was a common world in which all met in mutual interests, but she possessed the peculiar power of holding for each of her children their own "inner shrine" which was truly "The Holy of Holies."

Although Peggy had known and loved Mrs. Harold longest, there was something in Mrs. Howland's gentle unobtrusive sweetness, in her hidden strength, which drew Peggy as a magnet and for the first time in her life she longed for the one thing denied her: such a love as Polly claimed.

But it seemed an impossibility, and her nearest approach to it lay in Mrs. Harold's affection for her.

Peggy was not ungrateful, but what had befallen the usual order of things? Was this aunt, with whom, try as she would, she could not feel anything in common, about to establish herself in the home, every turn and corner of which was so dear to her, and utterly disrupt it? For this Peggy felt pretty sure she would do if left a free hand. Already she had most of the old servants in a state of ferment, if not open hostility. They plainly regarded her as an interloper, resented her assumption of rule and her interference in the innumerable little details of the household economy. Her very evident lack of the qualities which, according to their standards, stood for "de true an' endurin' quality raisin'," made them distrust her.

Now the "time was certainly out of joint" and poor little Peggy began to wonder if she had to complete the quotation.

All that has been written had passed like a whirlwind through Peggy's harassed brain in much less time than it has taken to put it on paper. It was all a jumble to poor Peggy; vague, yet very real; understood yet baffling. The only real evidences of her unhappiness and doubt were the tears and sobs, and these soon called, by some telepathic message of love and a life's devotion, the faithful old nurse who had been the comforter of her childish woes. For days Mammy had been "as res'less an' onsettled as a yo'ng tuckey long 'bout Thanksgivin' time," as she expressed it, and had found it difficult to settle down to her ordinary routine of work during the preceding two weeks. She prowled about the house and the premises "fer all de 'roun worl' like yo' huntin' speerits," declared Aunt Cynthia, the cook.

"Huh!" retorted Mammy, "I on'y wisht I could feel dat dey was frien'ly ones, but I has a percolation dat dey's comin' from below stidder above."

So perhaps this explains why she went up to Peggy's room at an hour which she usually spent in her own quarters mending. Long before she reached the room she became aware of sounds which acted upon her as a spark to a powder magazine, for Mammy's loving old ears lay very close to her heart.