“Yes; she’ll be missed.” Archibald admitted.
“Peggy,” he said, after their neighbor had gone away, “you’ll have to keep me hard at my gardening and my neighboring. It isn’t going to be easy for me to be contented all the time.”
“Yessir.” There was a trace of anxiety in her ready smile. Something was wrong in his face and voice and she was quick to notice it. “The garden doesn’t need much now; but neighbors always need a lot. Shall we go and see the Kelleys this afternoon? He’s up now; but he isn’t well enough to work and she says he gets awfully lonesome and discouraged.”
In their way to the Kelleys they stopped at the house under the maples. Archibald proposed it. He wanted to meet the man the Smiling Lady was going to marry; wanted to meet him and have done with it. When a dream refused to lie down decently and die of its own accord, the thing to do with it was to kill it and the sooner, the better.
So he and Pegeen made their call on the Smiling Lady, finding a warm welcome—and Richard Meredith, which was what Archibald had expected. He took the measure of the man, as he shook hands with him and, involuntarily, his hand tightened. This was a man. He liked the quiet manner, the quiet voice, the air of distinction, the refinement and strength of the mouth, the kindness in the eyes—but, as he noted the fine lines about the kind eyes and the gray hair above them, his heart cried out Ellen’s protest. Springtime was mating time.
The Smiling Lady was quiet, too, that afternoon. She and Archibald talked together over the teacups, while Pegeen sat in the hammock with Richard Meredith—at his invitation; and the teacup talk of casual things was punctuated by gay little peals of laughter from the child and deeper answering laughter from the man beside her. They seemed to be getting on famously together, those two.
“Do you know,” Pegeen announced to Archibald, when an hour later they rode away, “I honestly believe I could see to Mr. Meredith after all. I never really talked to him before and he isn’t a bit the way I thought he was. He isn’t proud inside atall; and, if he wasn’t going to marry Miss Moran, so that he can’t possibly need anything, I’d think he sort of needed seeing to. There’s a lonesomey look in his eyes.”