She stopped to laugh—a hoarse little laugh, which it pained Benson to hear.
“Isn’t that absurd?” she asked. “I am calling the baby ‘he.’ But I do hope it will be a boy—I adore little boys—and I’m afraid I rather hate little girls.”
“A son and heir,” said the nurse, placidly. “That will look nice in the newspapers.”
“Yes, baby will have to be in the newspapers,” agreed Peggy. “His first appearance upon any stage. I should so love to make something for him to wear. Eve is always working for him; though she contrives to keep her work a secret, even from me. ‘Mothers’-meeting work,’ she said, when I asked her what she was so busy about. As if I didn’t know better than that! One doesn’t use the finest lawn and real Valenciennes for mothers’-meeting work. Let me make something for Eve’s baby, Benson, there’s a dear. I would take such pains with my stitches.”
“It would tire you too much, Miss Margaret.”
“No, no, it won’t. My legs are weak—not my fingers. Let me make something, and surprise Eve with it when it is finished.”
“I don’t think Mrs. Vansittart would like you to know, miss. It is a secret.”
“Yes, but Eve knows that I know. I told her that I had been dreaming about her, and that I dreamt there was a baby. It was after I heard you and Paulette whispering—I really did dream—and Eve kissed me, and cried a little, and said perhaps my dream might come true.”
Peggy being very urgent, her nurse brought her some fine flannel, as soft as silk, and cut out a flannel shawl for the unknown, and instructed Peggy as to the manner in which it was to be made, and Peggy was propped up with pillows, and began a floss-silk scallop with neat little stitches, and with an earnest laboriousness which was a touching spectacle; but, alas! after ten minutes of strenuous labour, great beads of perspiration began to roll down Peggy’s flushed face, and the thin arm and hand trembled with the effort.
“Oh, Miss Margaret, you mustn’t work any more,” cried Benson, shocked at her appearance.
“I’m afraid I can’t, Nurse; not any more today,” sighed Peggy, sinking back into the pillows, breathless and exhausted. “But I’ll go on with baby’s shawl tomorrow. Please fold it up for me and keep it in your basket. Eve mustn’t see it till it’s finished. The stitches are not too long, are they?”
No, the stitches were very small, but crowded one upon another in a manner that indicated resolute effort and failing sight.
“I feel as if I had been making shawls all day, like the poor woman in the poem,” said Peggy. “ ‘Stitch, stitch, stitch, with eyelids heavy and dim!’ How odd it is that everything seems difficult when one is ill! I thought it was only my legs that were weak, but I’m afraid it’s the whole of me. My finger aches with the weight of my thimble—the dear little gold thimble my brother-in-law gave me on Christmas Day.”
She put the little thimble to her lips, and kissed it as if it were a sentient thing. Vansittart came into the room while she was so engaged.
“Oh, there you are,” she said. “Do you know what I was thinking about?”
“Not I, quotha,” said he, sitting down by Peggy’s couch and taking her thin little hand in his. “Who can presume to thread the labyrinth of a young lady’s mind, without the least little bit of a clue? You must give me a clue, Peg, if you want me to guess.”
“Well, then, I was thinking of you. Is that a clue?”
“Not much of a one, my pet. You might be thinking anything—that my last coat is a bad fit about the shoulders—a true bill, Peggy; that I am growing stupid and indolent in this inconsistent climate, where one sleeps half the day and lies awake more than half the night.”
“I was thinking of your goodness to Eve, and to all of us. My gold thimble; your bringing us here when you would rather have stayed in Hampshire to hunt. And I was thinking how different our lives would have been if you had never come to Fernhurst. Eve would just have gone on slaving to make both ends meet, cutting out all our frocks, and working her Wilcox and Gibbs, and bearing with father’s temper, and going without things. I should have outgrown my strength all the same; but there would have been no one to bring us to Cannes. I should never have seen the Mediterranean, or the Snow Alps, or mother’s grave. I should never have seen Eve in pretty tea-gowns, with nothing in the world to do except sit about and look lovely. You have changed our lives.”
“For better, Peggy?” he asked earnestly.
“Yes, yes; for worlds and worlds better,” she answered, with her arms round his neck.
Benson had crept off to her dinner; Peggy and her brother-in-law were alone.
“God bless you for that assurance, Peggy dear. And—if—if I were not by any means a perfect Christian—if I had done wicked things in my life—given way to a wicked temper, and done some great wrong, not in treachery but in passion, to a fellow-man—could you love me all the same, Peggy?”
“Of course I could. Do you suppose I ever thought you quite perfect? You wouldn’t be half so nice if you were outrageously good. I know you could never be false or treacherous. And as for getting in a passion, and even hitting people, I shouldn’t love you one morsel the less for that. I have often wanted to hit people myself. My own sister Sophy, for instance, when she has
