They altogether forgot him, when they went into the lamp-lighted room to figure on changes in the club house; but, as he sat there in the shadow, feeling oddly old and tired, a little figure slipped out through the French windows and tucked herself cozily into the hammock beside him.
“Which do you think would be nicer to have—a piano or a phonograph?” Pegeen asked confidentially, gathering him, as a matter of course, into intimacy of discussion and planning.
The man smiled in the dusk. She was so small and sweet and friendly and—though that he could not know—so sure he needed seeing to.
“I’ll give you both, for your neighborhood house, Pegeen,” he said—but added quickly, “if Mr. Archibald doesn’t object.”
“Why, he’d be _glad_,” she insisted stoutly, though back in her own mind there was a doubt. “That’s perfectly sweet of you. Oh, dear, it does seem as if God must have been working on that club for years and years. Everything’s going so beautifully. Only Deacon Ransom’ll have a fit about the billiard table. He won’t fit hard enough to keep him away though, and Miss Moran says he’s just got to let Sally come. I wish she’d get a beau down there and run off with him. Honestly I do. I’d help—if he’s nice. Do you know, I think a piano and a phonograph’s an awful lot for you to give. I wouldn’t want anything but the phonograph, but you see the mothers are so proud if their daughters can play some pieces and when there’s an entertainment, they always want the girls to show off; so it seems as if we really did need a piano. I’m going to tell everybody that you thought it up all by yourself, and Miss Moran didn’t have a thing to do with it. I shouldn’t wonder if you’d think of lots of things like that after a while. It isn’t a bit hard, after you once get started—not if anybody’s nice inside, like you. I guess city folks have to get new glasses to see country folks right, and some of them don’t ever bother to do it; but the awfully nice ones, like you and Miss Moran and Mr. Archibald, do. And then, after they put on the new glasses, they see so many kind things to do that they work like the very old Scratch to catch up with themselves.”
Meredith pulled the child’s head down against his shoulder and rumpled the thick curls with a gentle hand.