Chapter XII: The New Lucy

In the week that followed, the education of Lucy Haines progressed rapidly. After that first afternoon when the time had slipped away without her knowing it, she kept her eye on the clock and was careful not to over-stay the hour. But as she came every day, and her enthusiasm for learning fully matched Peggy's enthusiasm for teaching, the results were all that could be wished.

Then one afternoon her pupil failed to appear, and Peggy wondered. A second afternoon brought neither Lucy nor an explanation of her absence. "I'm afraid she's sick," said Peggy, who never thought of a discreditable explanation for anything till there was no help for it.

"Sick of algebra, more likely," suggested Claire. "I thought such zeal wouldn't last."

"She doesn't seem like that sort of a girl," declared Amy, who was developing a tendency to disagree with Claire on every possible pretext. "She's one of the stickers, or I don't know one when I see it."

A little assenting murmur went the rounds, and Claire glanced reproachfully at Priscilla, who had sided against her. "Two souls with but a single thought," represented Claire's ideal of friendship. That two people could love each other devotedly, and yet disagree on a variety of subjects, was beyond her comprehension. She was ready at a moment's notice to cast aside her personal convictions, and agree with Priscilla, whatever stand the latter cared to take, and it seemed hard, in view of such unquestioning loyalty, that Priscilla should persist in having opinions of her own.

But Claire's hour of triumph was on its way. When Jerry Morton came in the morning with a string of freshly caught fish, he produced from the depths of an over-worked pocket a folded paper, which, to judge from its worn and soiled appearance, had served as a hair-curler or in some equally trying capacity. This he handed to Peggy, who regarded it with natural misgiving.

"That Haines girl sent it," Jerry explained. "I put it in the pocket where I carry the bait, but I guess the inside is all right."

Thus encouraged, Peggy unfolded the dingy scrap, but the changes of her expressive face did not bear out Jerry's optimistic conjecture that the "inside" was all right. Judging from Peggy's crestfallen air, it was all wrong. The note was not written in Lucy's usual regular hand. The letters straggled, the lines zig-zagged across the page, and the name signed was almost an unintelligible scrawl. But Peggy thought less of these superficial matters than of the unwelcome news communicated.

"Dear Friend:--I shan't come to study algebra any more. I've given
up the idea of going to school any longer. I thank you very much
for trying to help me, but it's no use.

"Yours truly,
"Lucy Haines."

"I thought it was something like that," Claire remarked triumphantly when the note was read aloud, and she reflected with some satisfaction that she alone had suggested the rightful explanation of Lucy's action.

"I must say I'm disappointed in that girl," declared Peggy, absently smoothing out the crumpled paper. Her bright face was clouded. "Wednesday she was just as interested and ambitious as she could be. And now she's given up. It doesn't seem like her."

"I must say she doesn't show a great deal of gratitude," exclaimed Ruth, always ready to rush to Peggy's defence. "Here you've been using your vacation to teach her, when you might have been enjoying yourself, and then all at once she gets tired of it. It doesn't seem to occur to her that if you were like most girls, you'd be the one to give up."

The expression of Peggy's face suggested that she was rather absorbed in her own thoughts, and giving but scant heed to the words of her champion.

"Do you know, girls," she said slowly, "I'm going over to see Lucy and find out what this means."

There was a chorus of protests. "Don't you do it, Peggy," Amy cried indignantly. And Priscilla remarked, "I wouldn't tease her into accepting a kindness that she hadn't the sense to appreciate."

"It was too much for you to do anyway," Ruth chimed in. "I think it's a good thing she's tired of it, myself." But Peggy was not to be dissuaded from her purpose. Under the uncompromising statements of the bald little note, there was something that claimed her sympathy. Even the straggling lines, so little suggestive of the Lucy Haines she knew, carried the suggestion of appeal. "I'm not going to coax her into doing anything," Peggy explained. "But--" and this with unmistakable firmness--"I'm going to find out."

After dinner, when the other girls were indulging in afternoon naps, or lounging on the porch, Peggy donned a broad-brimmed shade hat, and with Hobo at her heels, started toward Lucy's home. The zig-zag path crossing the pastures was both shorter and pleasanter than the road, and Peggy rather enjoyed getting the better of such obstacles as snake fences and brooks that must be crossed on stepping stones. Such things gave to an otherwise prosaic ramble the fine flavor of adventure.

She was flushed and warm, and looking, had she known it, unusually pretty, with her moist hair curling in rings about her forehead, when she came in sight of Lucy's home, a straggling cottage which would have been improved by paint and the services of a carpenter. Both lacks were partially concealed by vines which climbed over its sagging porch, and tall rows of hollyhocks, generously screening with their showy beauty its weather-beaten sides. A girl was in the back yard chopping wood, a rather slatternly girl with disordered hair. Peggy descended on her briskly to ask if Lucy were at home.

Hatchet in hand, the girl faced about. Peggy's head whirled. She made a confused effort to recall whether Lucy had ever mentioned a sister, a sister considerably older, and not nearly so nice. Then her momentary confusion passed, and she realized she was facing Lucy herself. The shock of her discovery showed in her voice as she exclaimed, "Why, it's you!"

"Of course," said Lucy a little coldly, but she cast a half-apologetic downward glance at her untidy dress, and her color rose. With obvious reluctance she asked, "Won't you come in?"

Peggy was conscious of a thrill of righteous indignation. She stood very straight and her eyes met those of the other girl squarely. "Lucy, are you angry with me?"

Lucy Haines did not answer immediately. Her bared throat twitched hysterically and all at once the eyes which looked into Peggy's brimmed over.

"Don't, please!" she said in a choked voice. "Me angry! Why, you're the kindest girl I ever dreamed of. Till I'm dead I'll love to think about you and how good you are. But it's no use."

Peggy seated herself on the woodpile. Her native cheerfulness had returned with a rush.

"Now, Lucy Haines, let's talk like two sensible people. If I'm as nice as all that, you ought to be willing to trust me a little. What's the reason it's no use? What's made all the difference since Wednesday?"

Lucy's silence was like a barrier between them. If it had not been for the tears upon her cheeks, Peggy would have been inclined to distrust her memory of that momentary softening. The girl's confidence came at last reluctantly, as if dragged from depths far under the surface, like water raised in buckets from a well.

"My money's gone."

Peggy had an uncomfortable feeling that she must grope her way. "Your money's gone?" she repeated, to gain time.

"Yes, the money I've been saving up. The money that was to help me get through school next year. You know how I've worked this summer. And there isn't a thing to show for it."

"How much was it?"

"Forty dollars."

All at once Peggy felt an insane desire to laugh. The impulse was without doubt, purely nervous. For though there seemed to her a surprising discrepancy between the sum named and the despair for which it was responsible, the humorous aspect of the case was not the one which would naturally appeal to a disposition like Peggy's. Desperately she fought against the impulse, coughed, bit her twitching lips, and finally acknowledged defeat in a little hysterical giggle. Lucy stared at her, too astonished to be angry.

"There!" Now that the mischief was done, Peggy felt serious enough to meet all the requirements of the case. "I've laughed and I'm glad of it. For it's a joke. Forty dollars! A girl as bright as you are, ready to sell out for forty dollars. It's enough to make anybody laugh."

Lucy put her hand to her forehead. "But it was all I had," she said rather piteously.

"All you had. But not all you can get. Why, I had a friend who went into a business office last winter. She's earning forty dollars a month now, and they'll raise her after she's been with them a year. Forty dollars means a month's work for a beginner. You've lost a month, and you talk as if everything had been lost."

The rear door of the cottage opened, and a young man appeared, a distinctly unprepossessing young man, whose shabby clothing somehow suggested a corresponding shabbiness of soul. He stood irresolute for a moment, then turned and struck off across the fields, his shambling gait increasing the unfavorable impression that Peggy had instantly formed.

Lucy regarded her visitor with burning eyes.

"I didn't mean to tell anybody," she said. "I thought my pride wouldn't let me, but what's the use of my being proud? That was my brother, and he drinks. I guess you'd know it to look at him, wouldn't you? It was he who stole my money. That's the kind of people I belong to."

Peggy got to her feet. She had an odd feeling that she could not do her subject justice sitting on a woodpile, with her feet dangling.

"Lucy Haines," she said with a severity partly contradicted by the kindness of her eyes, "I'm ashamed of you. I can tell just by the little I know of you, what kind of ancestors you had, and you ought to be thankful for them every day you live. Think of all the sickly people in the world, that can't more than half live at best, and you with your splendid, strong body. And think of the stupid ones, who try to learn and can't, and you seeing through everything like a flash. I know what kind of people you belong to, Lucy Haines, and you ought to be proud and thankful, too."

The immediate effect of this outburst was a surprise. Lucy Haines sat down on the chopping-block and began to cry. She cried as if the pent-up sorrows of her life were at last finding outlet, cried as if she never meant to stop. Peggy in her dismay tried coaxing, scolding, petting, each in turn, and at last gave up the vain endeavor, and took her old place on the woodpile, to wait till Lucy should have come to the end of her tears.

At last the figure in the soiled calico was no longer shaken by convulsive sobs. Lucy turned toward the patient watcher on the woodpile, and in spite of her swollen lids and blood-shot eyes, Peggy knew it was the old Lucy looking up at her. "Well?" she demanded cheerfully. "It's all right, isn't it?"

"Yes," Lucy agreed hesitatingly. "I'm going to try again, if that's what you mean."

"And you'll come to-morrow?"

"Yes, I'll come to-morrow, if you're not too disgusted to bother with me any longer," said Lucy humbly.

"Well, it's time for Hobo and me to be going home." Peggy jumped to her feet, crossed briskly to the unkempt figure, and stooping, kissed a tear-stained cheek. And then Lucy's arms went about her, and clasped her close in passionate gratitude.

"Peggy Raymond," said a stifled voice, "I can't do anything to pay you back, but this. I promise you I'll make you proud of me yet. You were ashamed of me to-day, but if I live, I'll make you proud of me." And Peggy had one more bewildering impression to add to the varied catalogue of characteristics which made up the Lucy Haines, whom she was beginning to think she had never known till that day.

In spite of this triumphant conclusion to her enterprise, Peggy returned to the cottage heavy of heart. There is always a danger that the sensitive and sympathetic will find the revelation of the misery in the world overwhelming, bringing the temptation to shut one's eyes to suffering, or else in its contemplation, to lose the joy out of life. And as it only takes an added drop to cause a full cup to brim over, Peggy's dejection reached the overflowing point, through no other agency than the yellow hen.

The girls all noticed that Peggy was silent, as well as uncommunicative. She fenced skilfully to evade direct answers to their questions, but she did not seem inclined to introduce new topics of conversation. And when Amy called her from the kitchen, where she and Ruth were getting supper, Peggy sat staring abstractedly ahead of her till the call was repeated.

Priscilla glanced up from her magazine. "Say, Peggy, the girls are calling you. Probably they are having trouble with the muffins."

"Oh, I didn't hear," Peggy sprang to her feet, and went hastily through the house to the kitchen. But it was not domestic difficulties which accounted for Amy's summons. She stood at the window, flattening her nose against the screen.

"Peggy, I wish you'd tell me what this old vixen is about. Is she trying to punish one of the chickens, or is it only a game?"

For ten days past the yellow hen had been freed from the restraints of the coop, and by day had led her brood in adventurous quest of grasshoppers, and at sunset had conducted them to the waiting nest in the rear of the woodshed. But at the present moment, a peculiar scene was being enacted. At the open door of the woodshed, a sleepy brood huddled close, awaiting the return of their mother, who with an air of determination was pursuing a squawking chick, running as if for his life.

Around the cherry-tree they circled, once, twice, thrice. Then the pursuer overtook her foster-child, and pecked him savagely. It was not a game.

The yellow hen strutted off in the direction of her peeping brood, clucking complacently, as if she congratulated herself on solving some problem satisfactorily. The poor little outcast followed with a piteous pipe, which caused the Spartan mother to turn and repeat her admonition.

For a moment Peggy was at a loss for an explanation. Then she understood. "I know," she cried. "He's a different breed from the others, and he's outgrown them, and the senseless old creature thinks he doesn't belong to her. She's just got to be nice to him, that's all."

But Peggy's efforts at discipline were unavailing. The speckled chicken surreptitiously introduced under the yellow hen's hovering wings, enjoyed the briefest possible period of maternal protection. Before Peggy could get back into the house, the yellow hen was chasing him all around the woodshed, and Peggy found it necessary to make him comfortable for the night in a basket set behind the stove.

And this was the little drop which made her cup overflow. The forlorn peeping of the outcast chicken seemed to blend with poor Lucy's sobs. Peggy wondered if it could be that the voice of earth's suffering was like the hum of the insects on a summer night, so constant that one might not hear it at all, but an overwhelming chorus if one listened.

"Peggy Raymond, do you think you're coming down with anything?" Amy demanded crossly, at half-past nine o'clock that evening. "Because you're about as much like yourself as chalk is like cheese."

Peggy stood up.

"No, I'm not coming _down with_ anything," she said lightly, "but I'm going _up to_ something, and that's my bed. I believe I'm sleepy."

Before she climbed the stairs, she went out into the kitchen to be sure that the speckled chicken was comfortable. As she touched the basket he answered with a soft, comfortable sound like the coo of a baby, or the chirp of a sleepy little bird, the sound that speaks of warmth and contentment. Peggy stood beside the basket thinking.

"There! I knew something was wrong." Amy had followed her friend out into the kitchen. "You're crying over that chicken. Why, you silly Peg!"

But Amy had misinterpreted the moist eyes. That little contented sound from the basket back of the stove had brought a message to Peggy. She had made the chicken comfortable in spite of its unnatural mother. She had rekindled ambition in Lucy's heart in spite of her thieving brother. All at once Peggy understood that the compensation for insight is the joy of helpfulness. It was not meant for any heart to bear the burden of earth's grief, but only to lighten it as one can, and be glad.

And so, after all, Peggy went up to bed comforted.