XIV
MAKING PEACE
Sidney was not only out "on-the-pad" that day, but she came home later than usual. The children and Uncle Watty were hungry and waiting impatiently for the basket; and there were many urgent household duties to be done before bedtime. Doris made one or two shy attempts to speak of her dancing lesson and the incident which had occurred in connection with it. But speaking to Sidney in the rush of her domestic affairs was like trying the voice against the roar of a storm. So that Doris was compelled to put off the telling till the next morning.
On the next morning, however, there was even less chance for a quiet word than there had been on the night before. Sidney was up betimes, to be sure, and bustling round, but it was merely in order to be ready for an important engagement, a most important one, which brooked no delay. It was barely nine o'clock when she set off up the big road, with her ball of yarn held tightly under her left arm, and her knitting-needles flying and flashing in the sunlight. Her sunbonnet was pushed as far back on her yellow head as it could be, to stay on at all, and such was her stress of mind that she took it off and hung it on the fence, and let her hair down and twisted it up again, thrusting the comb back in place with great emphasis, no less than three times, within the few minutes during which Doris stood at the gate looking after her.
It was a hard task which lay before Sidney that day. She was the peacemaker, as well as the funmaker, for the entire community. One fact was as well known, too, as the other, but there was nothing like an equal demand for the two offices; for the Oldfield people dwelt together, as a rule, in such harmony as Sidney found, not only monotonous, but even a little dull now and then. It is but natural to wish to exercise a talent, and to be unwilling to hide it, when we know ourselves to be possessed of it in no common degree. When, therefore, some foolish joke of Kitty Mills's set the long-smouldering sense of wrong fiercely blazing in Miss Pettus's breast, Sidney could but feel that her longed-for opportunity had come at last. She was not in the least daunted by the knowledge that the quarrel was an old one, newly broken out afresh like a rekindled fire, and consequently much harder to mend, or even to control, than if it were new. Nor had her ardor been lessened in the slightest by finding that everything which she had said on the previous evening had served but as oil to the flame of Miss Pettus's burning wrath. Sidney's self-confidence and courage, being of the first order, only rose with all these obstacles. They merely put her all the more on her mettle, and she had rested well and confidently through the night, satisfied to have secured Miss Pettus's promise not to say or to do anything until the following morning. Ten hours' sleep must cool even Miss Pettus's temper in a measure, Sidney thought, like the real philosopher that she was, and she herself would be better prepared with arguments after time for reflection. Miss Pettus had flared up like gunpowder, then as always, when least expected, so that Sidney had hardly known at the moment what to say.
And for all her reliance upon her own strength and tact, she had none too fully realized the necessity for prompt action. It was lucky, indeed, that she was early; for, early as she set out, she met Miss Pettus coming down the big road "hotfoot," as Sidney said afterward, already on the way to see Kitty Mills. It was not of the slightest use, Miss Pettus cried,—beginning as soon as she came within speaking distance of the peacemaker,—not of the least use in the world for Sidney to begin again arguing about Kitty Mills's never meaning to cheat anybody. She, Miss Pettus, was sick and tired of having things smoothed over, and of being told and told that she was mistaken. She was not mistaken. The facts stood for themselves: Kitty Mills had said when she swapped the dorminica for the yellow-legged pullet and a bit to boot, that the dorminica laid big eggs. Let Kitty Mills deny that if she dared! Then let Sidney, or the whole of Oldfield, come and look at the little eggs that that dorminica did lay. It was bad enough to be so cheated in a hen trade, without having it thrown up to you almost every day of your life, in some silly joke. What did Kitty Mills mean, except insult, by sending her word that she couldn't expect a fat hen to lay the same up hill and down dale. And then, as if that were not enough, what did Kitty Mills do, but send back that same yellow-legged pullet, and even the very same bit, offering to swap again. All this Miss Pettus demanded breathlessly in unabated excitement.
"I give you, and anybody else, my solemn word, as a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, that that was the tenth time that the identical yellow-legged pullet and the identical bit have been toted up this hill and toted down again. Kitty Mills offers to swap back every time she thinks of it, just to be aggravating. No, you needn't talk to me, Sidney. Kitty Mills means to show me that she believes it's the pullet and the bit that I care about, not the principle of the thing."
Plainly it was now become a case for diplomacy, not for further argument. Sidney, therefore, said simply, like a wise woman, that she would go at once and try to make Kitty Mills see how foolish she had been.
"I told Miss Pettus," Sidney said later to Kitty Mills, when giving her an account of this encounter with Miss Pettus, "that there was no more satisfaction in quarrelling with you than in fighting a feather bed. But I couldn't do much with her. Nobody can budge 'er, once her dander is up. I left her there, planted right in the middle of the big road, with her skirt dragging behind, and held high before, showing her pigeon-toes turned in worse than ever, and her bonnet hung wild over her left ear, as it always is when she's in one of her tantrums. And now I've come after you, and I want you to stop laughing,—right off the reel, too,—and listen to what I've got to say. I'll vow I don't know what to make of you myself, Kitty Mills! What's this I hear about all the Millses a-swarming down from Green River, and about you're inviting them to dinner? It certainly does seem as if the more they pile on you the better you like it."