“If you please, sir,” she began and hesitated. The cloud of anxiety had drifted over the whole piquant face.
“Yes?” encouraged the man across the table.
“Are you sure you can afford it, sir?” It came out with a rush at last—“I’ve always heard that artists—I don’t really need the things. I’ve got plenty. I can get along first rate with just the shoes and aprons.”
Through Archibald’s mind drifted a fleeting memory of the last gift he had sent to Nadine Ransome. She loved emeralds and many men had given them to her. A dull flush came into his cheeks.
“I’m quite sure I can afford it. You see I had a father who didn’t paint pictures.”
“Oh, well, then—” said Peggy, understandingly.
“Pink roses,” stipulated the small girl, as she carried the breakfast dishes kitchenward.
For a few days after his high-handed adjustment of the wage problem, Archibald painted with something like his old time fervor. For two years, eye and hand and brain had been out of tune; but now the beauty of the world cried out to him again and his brush caught and fixed the meaning of the cry. Men had prophesied great things for him—men who knew. He had believed in great things for himself; but all that had been in the time he could scarcely remember—in the time before he had met Nadine. Since then he had lost faith in himself and in much beside; but now, standing before a finished picture and knowing it was good, the painter admitted to himself that life had its satisfactory moments. Not that he was sure of himself. He was far from it; but agreeable things _did_ happen. There was Pegeen and there was the Smiling Lady and there was June—and he had painted a good picture.
“Peggy,” he said, as the girl passed him on her way to the spring, “God must have had a mighty contented, comfortable feeling at the end of the sixth day.”
“Yessir.” She had no idea what he meant, but it was enough for her that he said a thing. She was willing to swear to it.
He put an affectionate hand upon her shoulder as she came and stood beside him looking at the picture.
“I understand you’re a wonderful hand with babies, Peg,” he said. “What do you do with a baby when he’s cross or bad or wants something he mustn’t have? Spank him, eh?”
“Well, I should think not! If that’s all you know about babies! Why, I just go to work and get the poor little thing awfully interested in something else.”