Poor little Peggy! When I think of this affair about Harry Goward I don't believe she ever felt sure of him; that is why she is so worked up over this matter now. I know there was something that I felt from the first through all her excitement, something that wasn't quite happy in her happiness. I feel atmospheres at once; I just can't help it. And when I get feeling other people's atmospheres too much I lose my own, and then I can't paint. I began so well the other day with the picture of that Armenian peddler, and now since Alice left I can't do a thing with it; his bare yellow knees look just like ugly grape-fruit. I wish Sally was in. She can't cook, but she can do a song-and-dance that's worth its weight in gold when you're down in the mouth.
—Just then I looked out of the window and saw my mother-in-law coming in. For a minute I was frightened. I'd never seen her look like that before—so white and almost OLD; she seemed hardly able to walk, and I ran to the door and helped her in, and put her in a chair and her feet on a footstool, and got her my dear little Venetian bottle of smelling-salts with the long silver chain; it's so beautiful it makes you feel better just to look at it. I whisked Peter's shoes out into the hall, and when I sat down by her she put her hand out to me and said, “Dear child,” and I got all throaty, the way I do when any one speaks like that to me, for, oh, I HAVE been lonesome for Dad and Momsey and my own dear home! though no one ever seems to imagine it, and I said:
“Oh, can't I do something for you, Madonna?” I usually just call her “you,” but once in a great while, when there's nobody else around, I call her Madonna, and I know she likes it, even if she does think it a little Romish or sacrilegious or something queer.
But she said she didn't want anything, only to rest a few minutes, and that there was something she wanted me to tell Peter. She couldn't come in the evening to see him without every one wanting to know why she came. There was some terrible trouble about Peggy's engagement. She flushed up and hesitated, and when I broke in to say, “You needn't bother to explain, I know all about the whole thing,” she didn't seem at all surprised or ask how I knew—she only seemed relieved to find that she could go right on. I never can be demonstrative to her before people, but I just put my arms around her now when she said:
“It's a great comfort to be able to come to you, Lorraine, and speak out. At home your dear grandmother considers me so much—she only thinks of everything as it affects me, but it makes it so that I can't always show what I feel, for if I do she gets ill. All I can think of is Peggy. If you knew what it was to me just now when my little Peggy went away from me and locked herself in her room—Peggy, who all her life has always come to me for comfort—”
She stopped for a minute, and I patted her. It was so unlike my mother-in-law to speak in this way; she's usually so self-contained that it made me sort of awestruck. After a moment she went on in a different voice:
“They all want me to tell Cyrus—your father—that Aunt Elizabeth has been trying to take Mr. Goward's affections away from Peggy. I'm afraid it's just what she has been doing, though it seems incredible that she should have any attraction for a young man. I was glad Elizabeth had gone away overnight, for Maria is in such a state I don't know what might have happened.”
“And don't you want to tell—father?” I gulped, but I knew I must say it. “Why not, Madonna?”