years old and mellowed into beauty. New churches are an abomination.”
“Did you see Peter Wright in church?” asked Louisa. She had been bursting to ask it.
Nancy nodded.
“Verily, yes. He sat right across from me in the corner pew. I didn’t think him painfully changed. Iron-gray hair becomes him. But I was horribly disappointed in myself. I had expected to feel at least a romantic thrill, but all I felt was a comfortable interest, such as I might have taken in any old friend. Do my utmost, Louisa, I couldn’t compass a thrill.”
“Did he come to speak to you?” asked Louisa, who hadn’t any idea what Nancy meant by her thrills.
“Alas, no. It wasn’t my fault. I stood at the door outside with the most amiable expression I could assume, but Peter merely sauntered away without a glance in my direction. It would be some comfort to my vanity if I could believe it was on account of rankling spite or pride. But the honest truth, dear Weezy, is that it looked to me exactly as if he never thought of it. He was more interested in talking about the hay crop with Oliver Sloane — who, by the way, is more Oliver Sloaneish than ever.”
“If you feel as you said you did the other night, why didn’t you go and speak to him?” Louisa wanted to know.
“But I don’t feel that way now. That was just a mood. You don’t know anything about moods, dearie. You don’t know what it is to yearn desperately one hour for something you wouldn’t take if it were offered you the next.”
“But that is foolishness,” protested Louisa.
“To be sure it is — rank foolishness. But oh, it is so delightful to be foolish after being compelled to be unbrokenly sensible for twenty years. Well, I’m going picking strawberries this afternoon, Lou. Don’t wait tea for me. I probably won’t be back till dark. I’ve only four more days to stay and I want to make the most of them.”
Nancy wandered far and wide in her rambles that afternoon. When she had filled her jug she still roamed about with delicious aimlessness. Once she found herself in a wood lane skirting a field wherein a man was mowing hay. The man was Peter Wright. Nancy walked faster when she discovered this, with never a roving glance, and presently the green, ferny depths of the maple woods swallowed her up.
From old recollections, she knew that she was on Peter Morrison’s land, and calculated that if she kept straight on she would come out where the old Morrison house used to be. Her calculations proved correct, with a trifling variation. She came out fifty yards south of the old deserted Morrison house, and found herself in the yard of the Wright farm!
Passing the house — the house where she had once dreamed of reigning as mistress — Nancy’s curiosity overcame her. The place was not in view of any other near house. She deliberately went up to it intending — low be it spoken — to peep in at the kitchen window. But, seeing the door wide open, she went to it instead and halted on the step, looking about her keenly.
The kitchen was certainly pitiful in its disorder. The floor had apparently not been swept for a fortnight. On the bare deal table were the remnants of Peter’s dinner, a meal that could not have been very tempting at its best.
“What a miserable place for a human being to live in!” groaned Nancy. “Look at the ashes on that stove! And that table! Is it any wonder that Peter has got gray? He’ll work hard haymaking all the afternoon — and then come home to THIS!”
An idea suddenly darted into Nancy’s brain. At first she looked aghast. Then she laughed and glanced at her watch.
“I’ll do it — just for fun and a little pity. It’s halfpast two, and Peter won’t be home till four at the earliest. I’ll have a good hour to do it in, and still make my escape in good time. Nobody will ever know; nobody can see me here.”
Nancy went in, threw off her hat, and seized a broom. The first thing she did was to give the kitchen a thorough sweeping. Then she kindled a fire, put a kettle full of water on to heat, and attacked the dishes. From the number of them she rightly concluded that Peter hadn’t washed any for at least a week.
“I suppose he just uses the clean ones as long as they hold out, and then has a grand wash-up,” she laughed. “I wonder where he keeps his dish-towels, if he has any.”
Evidently Peter hadn’t any. At least, Nancy couldn’t find any. She marched boldly into the dusty sitting-room and explored the drawers of an old-fashioned sideboard, confiscating a towel she found there. As she worked, she hummed a song; her steps were light and her eyes bright with excitement. Nancy was enjoying herself thoroughly, there was no doubt of that. The spice of mischief in the adventure pleased her mightily.
The dishes washed, she hunted up a clean, but yellow and evidently long unused tablecloth out of the sideboard, and proceeded to set the table and get Peter’s tea. She found bread and butter in the pantry, a trip to the cellar furnished a pitcher of cream, and Nancy recklessly heaped the contents of her strawberry jug on Peter’s plate. The tea was made and set back to keep warm. And, as a finishing touch, Nancy ravaged the old neglected garden and set a huge bowl of crimson roses in the centre of the table.
“Now I must go,” she said aloud. “Wouldn’t it be fun to see Peter’s face when he comes in, though? Ha-hum! I’ve enjoyed doing this — but why? Nancy Rogerson, don’t be asking yourself conundrums. Put on your hat and proceed homeward, constructing on your way some reliable fib to account to Louisa for the absence of your strawberries.”
Nancy paused a moment and looked around wistfully. She had made the place look cheery and neat and homelike. She felt that queer tugging at her heartstrings again. Suppose she belonged here, and was waiting for Peter to come home to tea. Suppose — Nancy whirled around with a sudden horrible prescience of what she was going to see! Peter Wright was standing in the doorway.
Nancy’s face went crimson. For the first time in her life she had not a word to say for herself. Peter looked at her and then at the table, with its fruit and flowers.
“Thank you,” he said politely.
Nancy recovered herself. With a shamefaced laugh, she held out her hand.
“Don’t have me arrested for trespass, Peter. I came and looked in at your kitchen out of impertinent curiosity, and just for fun I thought I’d come in and get your tea. I thought you’d be so surprised — and I meant to go before you came home, of course.”
“I wouldn’t have been surprised,” said Peter, shaking hands. “I saw you go past the field and I tied the horses and followed you down through the woods. I’ve been sitting on the fence back yonder, watching your comings and goings.” “Why didn’t you come and speak to me at church yesterday, Peter?” demanded Nancy boldly.
“I was afraid I would say something ungrammatical,” answered Peter drily.
The crimson flamed over Nancy’s face again. She pulled her hand away.
“That’s cruel of you, Peter.”
Peter suddenly laughed. There was a note of boyishness in the laughter.
“So it is,” he said, “but I had to get rid of the accumulated malice and spite of twenty years somehow. It’s all gone now, and I’ll be as amiable as I know how. But since you have gone to the trouble of getting my supper for me, Nancy, you must stay and help me eat it. Them strawberries look good. I haven’t had any this summer — been too busy to pick them.”
Nancy stayed. She sat at the head of Peter’s table and poured his tea for him. She talked to him wittily of the Avonlea people and the changes in their old set. Peter followed her lead with an apparent absence of self-consciousness, eating his supper like a man whose heart and mind were alike on good terms with him. Nancy felt wretched — and, at the same time, ridiculously happy. It seemed the most grotesque thing in the world that she should be presiding there at Peter’s table, and yet the most natural. There were moments when she felt like crying — other moments when her laughter