“Optimistic soul,” laughed Archibald. “Who is She?”
The Very Small Person started for the kitchen after another cup of coffee.
“Why, she’s the Smiling Lady,” she called back across her shoulder, as she went.
The words were left hanging on the air, and the little room seemed the brighter for them. Archibald said them over to himself softly.
“The Smiling Lady!” Had another Mona Lisa come to light in this Peaceful Valley?
“Pegeen,” he asked as the small girl came with his coffee, “who _is_ the Smiling Lady?”
“Oh, that’s just a name for her,” she explained. “I made it for her when she first came, ’n’ it fitted her so well that the others took it up, ’n’ now she’s the Smiling Lady all up ’n’ down the Valley; but her other name’s Moran.”
“It just melts the heart out of you, sir, it does—but she isn’t always smiling, you know—not with her lips. It’s a sort of a smile that goes with her like the words to a tune. ’N’ her hair’s all bright ’n’ ripply ’n’ smiley, ’n’ she walks so light, ’n’ she just has a way with her. When she comes into a room you feel as if birds had begun singing there.”
Archibald leaned back in his chair and looked at the slip of a girl, with the thin, expressive face in which now adoration glowed warmly.
“Pegeen,” he said, with conviction, “when you aren’t taking care of somebody, you write poetry?”
“Well, there’s the making of a poet in you. Did you say the Smiling Lady’s name was Mrs. Moran?”
“That’s better, much better. Peggy, my child, I _like_ the way you take care of me.”
And that night the ghosts forgot to walk.
Archibald wakened, sniffed incredulously, sat up in his hammock bed, and sniffed again.
Yes, it certainly was coffee—good coffee, and there was a subdued rustle and stir beyond the door leading into the kitchen.
Why, of course! He was being “seen to.” Pegeen had come back.
He had not really expected her, but he might have known she was not one to put her hand to the plow and look back.
Incidentally it might be well for him to arise and shine. The Young Person who had adopted him had intimated that, if the weather cleared over night, he would be expected to paint out of doors and let her clean his quarters. When she got ready to clean she would probably clean, and he must breakfast and make his escape.