And now while Peg sits before the mirror of my memory with her sweet face, as she on that far morning sat in the great leathern chair, let me please my fond pencil with a word of her. There were so many expressions of the unexpected to our Peg--for so I had grown to call her--one must needs be describing and redescribing her with each new page one turns. A born enchantress and a witch full-blown besides! it is the mere truth that Peg bore upon me like a spell. There was never woman to be Peg's marrow for flash and spirit, and beyond all to creep so tenderly near to one. And for a crown to that, she was as wise as the serpent. There were moments when Socrates himself might have listened to her and not lost his time. And she could shift color like a chameleon. Behold her on some day of social parade, or where she meets strangers or half acquaintances, and she will be older by fifteen years than now when she plants her small self in that armchair, and makes me turn my writing downward to talk with her. Tender, wilful, pliant, wise, patient, petulant, true, uncertain, sure, confiding and confusing, she offered contradictions equal with the General. I would exhaust the roll-call of the adjectives were I wholly to set forth this child-woman in the last of her frank arts and sage simplicities. Peg wore as many moods as a lake on a flawy day and where skies are scud-swept. Now, with a cloud across the sun, she would be dull and sad as lead. Then, with a gust of wind, she would wrinkle into waves of temper. And next there would dawn a tranquil moment when, calm and clear and deep and sweet, she shone on one like burnished silver. Once, I recall, she sat in her big chair, steeped in a way of pensive wordlessness. I had not heard her voice for an hour; nor she mine, for I was fallen behind in my letters, and politics and president-making are mighty gluttons of ink. Suddenly she broke in: “Why are you so good to me--so much more than any other?” “How should one fail of sympathy,” said I, giving my manner a light turn, “for another so innocent and so ill-used?” “And it's just sympathy--all sympathy?” demanded Peg, resting her round chin in her little shell of a palm. “Nothing but sympathy?” “What else should it be?” “I don't know,” said Peg, shortly. Then she walked slowly across the room and studied a picture. In a moment she gave a word to me over her shoulder: “I may tell you this, Mr. Questioner. There is but one question a man should put to a woman.” Smiling on her jaunty petulances, I went forward with my writing; she to pulling out the slides of a cabinet. This apartment, I should tell you, was my private workshop of politics wherein I repaired and extended the destinies of the General, and transacted his fame for him. There were a world of history and one president--and say the least of it--constructed in that room. Peg came presently to my elbow, bringing a trinket of coral. It had been my sister's, and was my mother's before that.