Peg

“ As I tell you, for all these exhibitions of commanding womanhood, Peg would continue with me but a child; the image of such ballroom triumphs were not to remain with me, while the real Peg, the true Peg, the dear Peg of memory when alone, would ever be the laughing, mocking, hectoring, teasing Peg on her leathern throne at my desk's end. It is the same with men; there come such words as play and work, and danger and safety ”

“ Peg called herself together with a shake of the head that had for one piquant effect the whipping of her shock of curls about her face, and leaving them a tangle to fall forward on her shoulders.
“Hear me,” went on Peg, brightening, and peering out on me in an arch way through her curls; “you are guilty of no wrong save the wrong of incredible dullness. ”

“ Pegg, who prepared for instant flight and was literally stupefied when the curate lifted his hat and graciously wished him "good evening." But Mr. Pegg was even more stupefied when, a few minutes later, he saw the curate seated on a doorstep, with the open parcel on his knees, and a mob of children gathered around him. For Mr. Jawley, with the sunniest of smiles, was engaged in distributing dolls, peg-tops, skipping-ropes, and little wooden horses to a running accompaniment of bull's-eyes, brandy-balls, and other delicacies, which he produced from inexhaustible pockets. ”

“ Peg and I talked the question up and down, I asking and she answering, and with the end we were where we started, that was nowhere at all. The Reverend Campbell came into my conjecturings, he and his magpie mate; but I did not mention them, for what would have been the use of feathering Peg's imagination with a surmise?
“But, in good truth, I came to you,” said Peg at the end, “not for any hope of solving this. That would be frankly impossible. Rather I am here to get a drink of your courage; for, faith! though I wear as brave a face as I may, my own betimes runs something low. ”

“ A mirage, the mere mirage of Peg—her picture, sketched on the skies of your ideal.” Then in a playful manner of correction, as when a girl refuses a compliment: “You have looked upward, watchdog, when you should have looked down. And now for your first lesson. This is the text of it: Would you find a woman, keep your eyes on the ground.”
For all Peg's humor of gaiety, I could tell how she was under greatest strain. ”

“ Then, seeing my flowers: “How now! how now! and when was Mars a gardener and has the world turned girl! These should be thin days and bloodless, when the starkest saber that ever rode on my bridle hand—he whom the Creeks called the 'Big Death'—loiters with woman's wares and learns to twine a posy.”
“They are for Peg,” said I, more nettled than I showed, for it struck me he talked a deal about nothing at all.
“Oh, they are for Peg,” he repeated, his glance whimsical, yet narrow and intent; “they are for Peg!” ”

“ I've told you how I own no warrant, whether of education or natural trend, to descant on wax-lights and polished floors and satins; but so far as I might trap the murmur of folk who should have such matters of gossamer and music on their tongues' ends, the most guarded decision went to it that Peg's position had become thereby as surely fixed as the pole-star, and might with as much safety be observed and steered by whenever any of your blind mariners of the drawing rooms should lose a course or find himself in deep, strange waters. ”

“ O'Connell went aboard with her, and an odd couple they looked on the saloon-deck, with Peg holding on to "Michael"—much to the amusement of the passengers, the visitors and the stewards.
Poor, staunch, loyal, honest, true little Peg, going alone to—what? Leaving the one human being she cared for and worshipped—her playmate, counsellor, friend and father—all in one! ”

“ You have grown-up, but you’ve grown-up very small! There seems less of you than ever. Was the climate too much for you out there? I should have liked to have seen you looking stronger, Peg!”
“Oh, I’m a wiry little person!” said Peggy lightly. “You needn’t be anxious about me;” but she coughed as she spoke, and lay back against the cushions, for really it was rather nice to have Rob anxious about her, and to see the troubled tenderness in his eyes! She fluttered her fan to and fro in a feeble, exhausted fashion, while Rob continued to stare and to frown. ”

“ She’s got enough strength in her body to work ten times harder, but Peg––” Here Lafe stopped and looked out to the hill beyond the tracks, “but, Peggy, perhaps we c’n find her somethin’ else after a while, when there ain’t so much fear of her uncle. To make a long story short, Peg, danger of him’s the only thing that’ll keep the kid luggin’ wood.”
“I was wonderin’,” returned Peg, “if we couldn’t get some one interested in ’er—the Kings, mebbe. They’re a good sort, with lots of money, an’ are more’n smart.” ”

“ And so by the light, or rather the twilight of your frown, I read him.”
“All exceeding clever,” said I, half made to laugh by the airy fashion wherein Peg would toss this off, “all exceeding clever. But it brings me with interest to my question, why, then, did you honor him with a dance?”
“For the same reason,” said Peg, with a look of funny malice, “that an Indian scalps his foe.” ”

“ You just can’t slump down when Peg’s boosting you. Even thinking about her’s better than medicine. Some days when I ain’t my best and the work don’t go good, I hang on to the thought of Peg as if ’twas a patent life-preserver. Funny, ain’t it—a little scrap of a big-eyed thing like her! She ain’t exactly pretty, Peg ain’t, but I think the angels must be some like her.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” Archibald agreed. He could understand why Pegeen had felt that she must go over and see to Mrs. ”

“ While Peg and I were on these long-range terms, I went more in hunt of the General for his company's sake and for conversation. I do not think the General stood aware of Peg's cold pose towards me, for, as I have urged, he was no one to see such things; besides, Peg, who showed herself no bad strategist, would be about me with the friendliness of those days that were, whenever the General sat by to make a third. Peg held the General in a best esteem ”

“ She weds Timberlake, the purser. He is here; then he is at sea. The girlish Peg is still a girl. She goes to rout and ball; she is gay and high and does not mope and wear demure half-weeds as good opinion holds one should whose love is on the sea among the storms. ”

“ He’s as mad as a March hare at times,” said the Colonel’s wife. “Forgets food, drink, sleep. He has appalling powers of absorption, of concentration. I know he leads Peg into all sorts of scrapes.”
“Leads Peg!” exclaimed her husband. “Good Lord! Does any one lead Peg? He’s a real boy, he gets into scrapes, but I still contend that he has an extraordinary sense of responsibility. Do you realise that every day of his life he has a certain routine of study, music, Catechism, Bible lesson, and that sort of thing, that he has kept up since his father left him? ”

“ She would create noise enough with her flight; setting her small feet down in emphasis and sending a rustle along the hallway with the swirl of her petticoats, so that I had ample time to raise my head and be on guard for her. She would nod slightly as she caught my glance, but ever sustained herself with that distance which she had seen fit to construct between us.
When Peg flashed by my door—for, radiant as ever, and with the motion of a meteor, “flashed” should be the description of it—I was bound to observe how her look shot straight for her chair like an arrow. ”

“ Peg’s little bit of a counter, the low rush-bottomed chair in which he sat to work, and a better one for a customer; his tools, and his chips—by which I mean the scraps of leather which he scattered about.
“Hardly had Mr. Peg got the soles and the upper leathers and the vamps to his mind, and sat down on his chair to begin work, when a little girl came in. She came from a door that opened upon a staircase leading to the upper room, and walked up to the cobbler. It was a little brown-haired girl, about nine or ten years old, in an old calico frock and pantalettes ”

“ Archibald, still holding Pegeen’s hand, appealed to a stately and suave floorwalker.
“I want to do some shopping for this young lady,” he explained—“a good deal of shopping, and I’m hopelessly incapable. Now you must have some woman about the place who could take us in hand—sort of advisory committee, pilot, first-aid rôle, some one with good sense and good taste. We’re strong on taste ourselves but we’re not so sure of our sense, eh, Peg?” ”

“ Bones grunted. "Why the devil won't she let him alone?" He brought the envelope to his nose and inhaled disgustedly. "All stink-o with perfume——"
He gave his own letter the cursory perusal young men invariably accord the communications of young ladies to whom they are related. Even Peg's declaration that she was contemplating matrimony failed to win from him more than a tolerant smile. Peg was always contemplating matrimony—merely contemplating. ”

“ Then Peggy wheeled Lafe away to bed, and as she helped him from the chair, she said:
“I lied to her just now with my own mouth, Lafe. I told her we et them sausages. We couldn’t eat ’em ’cause they was all mashed up an’ covered with blood.”
The cobbler’s eyes searched the mottled face of the speaker.
“That kind of lies ’re blessed by God in his Heaven, Peg,” he breathed tenderly. “A lie lendin’ a helpin’ hand to a sick lass is better’n most truths.”
Before going to bed Peg peeped in at Jinnie. The girl still lay with her arm over the sleeping Pete, her eyes roving round the room. ”

“ I might ’a’ known you’d be backwards if I’d stopped to think; but, you see, I’d got through all my chores and it seemed as if the heft of the morning was over, so I just ran along up to see Peg’s new clothes. I allowed the pile was too big for her to bring down to me. I’m some big myself but I c’n navigate handier than a lot of boxes and bundles can. ”

“ They gone, I to bed, much pleased, and do observe Mr. Lowther to be a pretty gentleman, and, I think, too good for Peg; and, by the way, Peg Pen seems mightily to be kind to me, and I believe by her father's advice, who is also himself so ”

“ At the next peg the Queen turned again, and this time she said, ‘Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing—turn out your toes as you walk—and remember who you are!’ She did not wait for Alice to curtsey this time, but walked on quickly to the next peg, where she turned for a moment to say ‘good-bye,’ and then hurried on to the last. ”

“ When the bonnet was reclaimed, the complaining gentleman proffered 4d., which was "indignantly rejected. Nothing less than sixpence could be taken;" which being given, the gentleman remarks commercially "that 6d. per evening is too heavy a rate to exact for the use of a peg."
By no means. At least, not at the Princess's Theatre: there, the whole management is a management of pegs. What is poor Byron made of, but a peg—a mere peg—whereon to hang the fine clothes of a Sardanapalus? Plays, as mere plays, are not to be thought of ”

“ The Cathedral clock sounded the hour of midnight.
Soon we heard the stealthy steps of Captain Pegg, and we gasped as we saw him, for in place of his flowered dressing-gown, he wore breeches and top boots, a loose shirt with a blue neckerchief knotted at the throat, and, gleaming at his side, a cutlass.
He smiled broadly when he saw us.
"Well, if you aren't armed—every man-jack of you—even to the bantling!" he cried. "Capital!"
"My sword, she's weal," said The Seraph with dignity. "Sometimes I fight giants." ”

“ For six Days and seven Nights she made the Mill to gang;
With a hey, &c.
Some call her Peggy, and some call her Jean,
But some calls her Midsummer, but they all are mista’en;
For Peggy is a bonny Lass, and grinds well her Mill,
For she will be Occupied when others they lay still:
With a hey, &c.
Peg, thee and Ise grin a poke, and we to War will leanes,
Ise lay thee flat upon thy Back and then lay to the steanes;
Ise make hopper titter totter, haud the Mouth as still,
When twa sit, and eane stand, merrily grind the Mill:
With a hey, &c. ”

“ Finally she did manage to get out of the room, after cannoning against the door and taking most of the skin off her nose, and made her way up-stairs ruefully, rubbing the places that hurt most, and wondering where in her anatomy lay the "clumsy bone" that her father always talked about. "And it isn't there all the time!" said poor Peggy. "Sometimes I don't fall into anything for days, and then, all at once, it's like this!" ”

“ Nothing should be heard on all sides, but the sharp stroke of the bat as it sent the ball skimming along the ground, the clear ring of the quoit, as it struck upon the iron peg: the noisy murmur of many voices, and the loud shout of mirth and delight, which would awaken the echoes far and wide, till the fields rung with it. ”

“ Forest’s very table, and sat, sweet and erect, with the soft candle light over her gold-glinting hair, in her radiant black eyes, and deepening the wonderful, sweeping color of her face. Her slender neck was delicate and proud as a princess’. The other girls’ fingers rested motionlessly on their soup spoons for an instant, during which they looked at their Peggy, spellbound. There was an air of graciousness, of regal beauty about her. There was no trace of the poor little Peggy who had once tried so hard to be a belle and had failed so miserably. ”