"So you've bruck trainin', Miss Peggy, an' are a-going for a real old-time warm-up? Well, I reckon it's about time, an' the best thing you can do, for you look sort o' pinin' an' down-in-the-mouth. Light out, little girl, an' come back lookin' like you uster; the purtiest sight God ever created for a man, woman or child ter clap eyes on. Take good care of her, Shashai, and you too, Tzaritza, cause you won't get another like her very soon."
Shelby's eyes were quick to discern the traces of Peggy's little storm, and he was by no means slow in drawing deductions. Peggy blushed, but said:
"I guess Daddy was right when he said I'd better go to school this year. You-all will spoil me if I stay here. Good-by, dear old Shelby, I love everyone on the place even if they do spoil me," and away she swept, as bonny a little bareback rider as ever sat a horse.
Meanwhile, up at the house events were shaping with the rapidity of a moving picture show.
When Peggy left her so abruptly Madam Stewart sat still for a few moments, pondering her next step. She had arrived at some very definite conclusions and intended carrying them out without loss of time. Her first move in that direction led her into the library where she wrote a letter to her brother-in-law. It was while she was thus occupied that Mammy had found Peggy and sent her for her ride. Then Mammy sought Harrison. Ordinarily, Mammy would have died before consulting Harrison about anything concerning Peggy, but here was a common issue, and if Mammy did not know that a house divided against itself must fall, she certainly felt the force of that argument. In Harrison she found a sympathetic listener, for the old housekeeper had been made to feel Mrs. Stewart's presence in the house in hundreds of irritating little ways. Mammy told of finding Peggy in tears, though she could not, of course, tell their cause. But Harrison needed no cause: the tears in themselves were all the cause she required to know.
Their conversation took place in the pantry and at the height of Harrison's protest against the new order of things a footfall was heard in the dining-room beyond. Thinking it Jerome's and quite ready to add one more to their league of defenders of Peggy's cause, Harrison pushed open the swinging door and stepped into the dining-room with all of her New England-woman's nervous activity. Mrs. Stewart stood in the room surveying with a critical, calculating eye, every detail of its stately, chaste appointments, for nothing had ever been changed.
Mrs. Stewart looked up as Harrison bounced in.
"O Harrison, you are exactly the person I wished to speak with," she said. "There are to be a few changes made in Mr. Stewart's domestic arrangements. In future I shall assume control of his home and relieve Miss Peggy of all responsibility. You may come to me for all orders."
She paused, and for the moment Harrison was too dumbfounded to reply, while Mammy in the pantry, having overheard every word, was noiselessly clapping her old hands together and murmuring: "Ma Lawd! Ma Lawd! Now I knows de sou'ce ob dat chile's tears." Before Harrison could recover herself Mrs. Stewart continued:
"Dr. Llewellyn will be here tomorrow for the weekend, and as I am to be mistress of the household it is more seemly that I preside at the head of the table. Tell Jerome that I shall sit there in future. And now I wish you to take me through the house that I may know more of its appointments than I have thus far been able to learn."