As Bell drove homeward he saw two figures at the Neal farm-gate—that gate which Peggy had closed behind her—and, coming nearer, he made out his own man Tom and the widow, lifting the body from the melting snow.
Peggy Neal did not come to her father's funeral. Letitia herself would have written the news to her, for the woman, dry-eyed and dumb and sitting by the coffin-side, had aged in a day and was now as helpless as a child.
"Shall I write to Peggy?" Letitia asked her, but she did not hear. Twice the question was repeated, but they got no answer, so Letitia wrote, and laid the letter on the casket, open and unaddressed. It was never sent.
V
SURPRISES
J
ogging homeward from a country call one afternoon in May, I was admiring the apple-orchards and the new-ploughed fields between them, when I chanced upon my son Robin with a handful of columbine, gathered among the Sun Dial rocks.
"Oh," said he, "is that you, father?" It is an innocent way of his when he has anything in particular to conceal.
"At any rate," I replied, "you are my son."