Nancy walked over the rough ground toward the barns with a light heart. She had a delightful sense of being "pals" with this new Peter Hyde--who, while the Barry Wallaces were swaggering around with their medals, was up here in an out-of-the-way corner of the nation, fighting a new sort of a fight! He actually _wanted_ her approval of his new piggery! CHAPTER XVI PETER LENDS A HAND It was quite natural that Nancy should take her problems to Peter Hyde. More correctly, she did not take them--Peter Hyde discovered them when, a few days later, he found Nancy alone in her Bird's-nest, completely surrounded by sheets of paper, a frown wrinkling her entire face, furiously chewing one end of her pencil. There had, of course, to be some explanation of the manuscript. Nancy told him of the play she was writing, how she had really come to North Hero to finish it! "I thought I'd have hours and hours to work. And I was so glad when I found this hiding place. I've been here, now, weeks and weeks, and have done scarcely a thing!" "Is it because the Muse will not come?" asked Peter, eying the scattered sheets with awe. "Oh, it would _come_--if it had a chance! My head's just bursting with things I want to write and I dream about them in my sleep. But--it sounds silly--I'm so busy. Maybe the things I do don't seem important but I just can't escape them." She made room for Peter on the seat beside her. Then she told him of Aunt Milly; of that first trip to the orchard, how it had been the beginning of a new life for the little woman. "I bring her downstairs every day now, right after breakfast, and she's one of the family. I'm going to coax Webb to make another sort of a chair; one she can wheel herself--I've seen them. She's learned to knit beautifully; she's so proud because she's working on a sock for the Belgian children--she says it's the first time she's _ever_ felt useful! She helps B'lindy, too. It makes you want to cry to see how happy she is. But with all her independence she wants me all the time. When I start to leave her there's something in the way she looks at me that is just as though she reached out and caught me by the hand!" Nancy described, too, how B'lindy was constantly finding little tasks for her that would keep her in the kitchen or on the back porch within sound of her voice. "You see talking's the joy of B'lindy's life and my ears are new--they haven't heard all the things she has to say. Just when I think I can escape she begins telling me of the cake her mother baked for Miss Sabrina's mother the day the Governor of Vermont came to Happy House--or something like that!"