The mother watched, remembering her own girlhood. Its romance, seen through a mist of gloomy years, seemed foolish now. There might be happiness in human life—she had never known any. There was a deal of nonsense in the world called love, she knew, and there was a surer thing called money. Peggy should wait for it.
The mother watched, smiling to herself sardonically, secretly well-pleased—smiling because she knew quite well that these callow sprigs had far less money than negligèes; well-pleased because she guessed that soon enough a man with both would be hovering about sweet Peggy's dairy. It was a humorous thing to her that all these city men should think it beautiful—that dampish, sunless spot where the milk-cans stood waist-deep in cresses.
She kept sharp eyes upon her daughter, and farm-house duties filled Peggy's days to their very brim. There must be no loitering by star-light, either. Mother and daughter now slept together in the attic store-room, for the new farming had proved a prosperous thing.
The summer was not like other summers. There was life and gayety up at Neal's: strumming of banjos and the sound of laughter and singing on the porch, much lingering in hammocks under the pine-trees, moonlit jaunts in the old hay-rick, lanterns moving about the barn and dairy, empty bowls on the buttery table when Mrs. Neal came down at dawn, and half-cut loaves in the covered crocks.
September came and the harvest had been gathered in. The last boarder had returned cityward. Peggy was in school again. One day, however, she was missing from her classes, and Letitia, fearing that she might be ill, walked to the farm after school was over. It was a pleasant road with a narrow path beside it among the grasses, and the day was cool with premonitions of the year's decline.
The farm seemed silent and deserted. She knocked at doors, she tapped lightly on the kitchen-windows, but no one was at home. At the barn, however, the horses were in their stalls, turning their heads to her and whinneying of their empty mangers. Surely, she thought, the Neals could not be gone. She stood awhile by the well-curb from which she could better survey the farm: it lay before her, field and orchard, bright with sunshine and golden-rod, yet she saw no moving thing but the crows in the corn-stubble and the cows waiting by the meadow-bars. Then she tried the dairy, and there heard nothing but the brook whimpering among the cans and cresses, and she turned away.
Now a lane runs, grassy and strewn with the wild blackberry-vines, through the Neal farm to a back road into town, and Letitia chose it to vary her homeward way. It passes first the brook, over a little hoof-worn, trembling bridge, and then the vineyard, where the grapes were purple that autumn evening. There, pausing to regale herself, Letitia heard a strange sound among the trellises. It was a child crying, moaning and sobbing as if its heart would break. For a moment only Letitia listened there; then she ran, fearfully, stumbling in the heavy loam between the rows of vines, to the spot from which the moaning came. She found a girl crouching on the earth.
"Peggy!" she cried, kneeling beside her. "Peggy! Are you hurt? Peggy! Answer me!"
The girl shook her head and shrank away among the lower leaves.
"Oh, what is the matter?" Letitia begged, terrified, and gathered Peggy into her arms. "Tell me! Tell me, sweet!"