For a moment Faith was too startled for reply, and then she asked curiously, with a queer flutter in her heart, "What did he say!"
"He just howled, 'No—o!' as loud as he could shout, and after that he said, more quiet-like, that you'd never be an angel as long as you kept on the way you are going. He says you need a good, common dose of sense and a cannon under your chair. He said Gail and Hope are the angels, and when I cried and told him we could spare you easier'n we could them, he said that he didn't mean sure-enough angels which fly away and never come back, but good, sensitive blessings that make the world better. He says you've got a cute minagination, and when you wake up and help Gail bear the slender burden on your shoulders, everything will be all right."
Profound silence reigned in the barn for what seemed an eternity to Peace, and then Faith burst forth hotly, "I never saw such a meddlesome child in all my born days, Peace Greenfield! What did you tell the doctor? Why did you chase to him in the first place? Do you want to get the whole neighborhood to gossiping about our affairs? I suppose you gave him the whole family history, from the time of Adam."
"I never did!" Peace indignantly denied. "I don't know of any Adam 'mong our relations. I found Gail upstairs crying about you this morning, and Hope promised to do all your work. I couldn't see why Hope should do your work unless you were going to be an angel, so I went to the doctor about it, and that is why he told me. He said we must help Gail all we could—"
"Why don't you, then, instead of causing her trouble whenever you turn around? You are into something the whole time to fret and worry her. Don't talk about me until you are perfect yourself!"
"I ain't perfect, but I try to help, and you know it. Don't I help Cherry with the dishes every single day, and dust the parlor and bring in wood, and hasn't Hope turned over setting the table to me?"
"And don't you break half the dishes?"
"I've broken only one plate and three cups, and I bought new ones out of my snow money, so there! When summer comes I'm going to pick strawberries for Mr. Hartman, and when I've paid up for those I spoiled last year, I'm going to give the rest of the money I earn to Gail to help her all I can. 'F I could make the lovely cakes you do, I'd go 'round the streets peddling them."
"If you were I, you'd do wonders," Faith broke in bitterly.
"Well, Mrs. Abbott told me herself that if the village baker could cook like that she would get all her delicate things there instead of bothering the girl with them, 'cause, in a little subu'b like this, she can't get a cook and a second girl to stay at the same time, and a common hired girl doesn't know beans about cakes and nice cookery. Mrs. Lacy said she'd take a cake reg'lar every week if she could get such nice ones as yours; and the butcher—guess what the butcher asked me yesterday! I went in his shop on my way home from the minister's, and he asked me when we were going to break up housekeeping here."