Ada has always been like that—she seems to get rid of her troubles just by telling them. Now she had passed her riddle on to me, and I could not keep Peggy and her affairs from my mind. I tried to tell myself that it would be better for every one to find out now than later if Henry Goward was not worthy to be Peggy's husband. But, oh, for all their sakes, how I hoped this cloud, whatever it was, would blow over! I have a very good constitution and I know how to take care of it, but when several more days passed without Peggy's hearing from Henry again I gave way, but I tried to keep up on Ada's account. I began to see how much this young man's honor and faithfulness meant to Peggy, and I took long excursions back into the past to remember how I felt at her age. Mail-time was the difficult time for all three of us. Before the postman came Peggy would brighten up; not that she was drooping at any time, only I knew how tensely she waited, because Ada and I waited with her. When the man came, and again no letters, Peggy held up her head bravely as could be, but I could see, all the same, how the light had gone out. The worst of it was, everybody knew about it. It would have been twice as easy for the child if she could have borne it alone, but Elizabeth Talbert watched the mail like a cat, and even manoeuvred to try and get the letters before Peggy, while Alice went around with her nose in the air, and I heard Maria saying to Ada:
“What's all this about Harry Goward's not writing?”
To escape it all I took to my room, coming down only for meals. I couldn't eat a thing, and Cyrus noticed it—it is queer how observant men are about some things and how unobservant about others. He didn't tell me what he was going to do, but in the afternoon Dr. Denbigh came to see me. That's the way they do—I'm liable to have the doctor sent in to look me over any time, whether I want him or not. Dr. Denbigh is an excellent friend and a good doctor, but at my time of life I should be lacking in intelligence if I didn't understand my constitution better than any doctor can. They seem to think that there's more virtue in a pill or a powder because a doctor gives it to one than because one's common-sense tells one to take it. That afternoon I didn't need him any more than a squirrel needs a pocket, and I told him so. He laughed, and then grew serious.
“You're not looking as well as you did, Mrs. Evarts,” he said, “and Talbert told me that you had all the preliminary symptoms of one of your attacks and wanted me to 'nip it in the bud,' he said.”
“Dr. Denbigh,” said I, “if the matter with me could be cured by the things you know, there are other people in this house who need your attention more than I.” I wanted to add that if Cyrus would always be as far-sighted as he has been about me there wouldn't be anything the matter to-day, but I held my tongue.
“I see you're worried about something,” the doctor said, very kindly. “Mental anxiety pulls you down quicker than anything.”
Then as he sat chatting with me so kind and good—there's something about Dr. Denbigh that makes me think of my own father, although he is young enough to be my son—I told him the whole thing, all except Aunt Elizabeth's share in it. I merely told him that Henry Goward had written to her and not to Peggy.
I felt very much better. He took what I told him seriously, and yet not in the tragic way we did. He has a way of listening that is very comforting.
“It seems absurd, I know, for an old woman like me to get upset just because her grandchild does not get letters from her sweetheart,” I told him. “But you see, doctor, no one suffers alone in a family like ours. An event like this is like a wave that disturbs the whole surface of the water. Every one of us feels anything that happens, each in his separate way. Why, I can't be sick without its causing inconvenience to Billy.” And it is true; people in this world are bound up together in an extraordinary fashion; and I wondered if Henry Goward's mother was unhappy too, and was wondering what it was Peggy had done to her boy, for she, of course, will think whatever happens is Peggy's fault. The engagement of these two young people has been like a stone thrown into a pond, and it takes only a very little pebble to ruffle the water farther than one would believe it possible.
After the doctor left, Ada came to sit with me. We were sewing quietly when I heard voices in the hall. I heard Peggy say, “I want you to tell mother.” Then Billy growled: