“Then they have acted graciously,” said Miss Larner, “and I will thank them when I meet them.”

It was humiliating, Old Peg having to walk out to the springhouse all by herself to plead with this stuck-up snooty old Philadelphia spinster. Horace ought to be going out there with her. Talk man to man with her– that's what this woman seemed to think she was, not a lady but a lord. Might as well come from Camelot, she might, thinks she's a princess giving orders to the common folk. Well, they took care of it in France, old Napoleon did, put old Louis the Seventeenth right in his place. But lordly women like this teacher lady, Miss Larner, they never got their comeuppance, just went on through life thinking folks what didn't talk perfect was too low to take much account of.

So where was Horace, to put this teacher lady in her place? Setting by the fire. Pouting. Just like a four-year-old. Even Arthur Stuart never got such a pout on him.

“I don't like her,” says Horace.

“Well like her or not, if Arthur's to get an education it's going to be from her or nobody,” says Old Peg, talking plain sense as usual, but does Horace listen? I should laugh.

"She can live there and she can teach Arthur if she pleases, or not if she don't please, but I don't like her and I don't think she belongs in that springhouse. "

“Why, is it holy ground?” says Old Peg. “Is there some curse on it? Should we have built a palace for her royal highness?” Oh, when Horace gets a notion on him it's no use talking, so why did she keep on trying?

“None of that, Peg,” said Horace.

“Then what? Or don't you need reasons anymore? Do you just decide and then other folks better make way?”

“Because it's Little Peggy's place, that's why, and I don't like having that benoctious woman living them!”

Wouldn't you know? It was just like Horace, to bring up their runaway daughter, the one who never so much as wrote to them once she ran away, leaving Hatrack River without a torch and Horace without the love of his life. Yes ma'am, that's what Little Peggy was to him, the love of his life. If I ran off, Horace, or, God forbid, if I died, would you treasure my memory and not let no other woman take my place? I reckon not. I reckon there wouldn't be time for my spot on the sheet to get cold afore you'd have some other woman lying there. Me you could replace in a hot minute, but Little Peggy, we have to treat the springhouse as a shrine and make me come out here all by myself to face this high-falutin old maid and beg her to teach a little black child. Why, I'll be lucky if she doesn't try to buy him from me.

Miss Larner took her time about answering the door, too, and when she did, she had a handkerchief to her face– probably a perfumed one, so she wouldn't have to smell the odor of honest country folks.

“If you don't mind I've got a thing or two I'd like to discuss with you,” said Old Peg.

Miss Larner looked away, off over Old Peg's head, as if studying some bird in a far-off tree. “If it's about the school, I was told I'd have a week to prepare before we actually registered students and began the autumn session.”

From down below, Old Peg could hear the ching-ching-ching of one of the smiths a-working at the forge. Against her will she couldn't help thinking of Little Peggy, who purely hated that sound. Maybe Horace was right in his foolishness. Maybe Little Peggy haunted this springhouse.

Still, it was Miss Larner standing in the doorway now, and Miss Larner that Old Peg had to deal with. “Miss Lamer, I'm Margaret Guester. My husband and I own this springhouse.”

“Oh. I beg your pardon. You're my landlady, and I'm being ungracious. Please come in.”

That was a bit more like it. Old Peg stepped up through the open door and stood there a moment to take in the room. Only yesterday it had seemed bare but clean, a place full of promise. Now it was almost homey, what with a doily and a dozen books on the armoire, a small woven rug on the floor, and two dresses hanging from hooks on the wall. The trunks and bags filled a corner. It looked a bit like somebody lived there. Old Peg didn't know what she'd expected. Of course Miss Larner had more dresses than this dark traveling outfit. It's just Old Peg hadn't thought of her doing something so ordinary as changing clothes. Why, when she's got one dress off and before she puts on another, she probably stands there in her underwear, just like anybody.

“Do sit down, Mrs. Guester.”

“Around here we ain't much with Mr. and Mrs., except them lawyers, Miss Larner. I'm Goody Guester, mostly, except when folks call me Old Peg.”

“Old Peg. What a– what an interesting name.”

She thought of spelling out why she was called “Old” Peg– how she had a daughter what run off, that sort of thing. But it was going to be hard enough to explain to this teacher lady how she come to have a Black son. Why make her family life seem even more strange?

“Miss Larner, I won't beat around the bush. You got something that I need.”

“Oh?”

“That is, not me, to say it proper, but my son, Arthur Stuart.”

If she recognized that it was the King's proper name, she gave no sign. “And what might he need from me, Goody Guester?”

“Book-learning.”

“That's what I've come to provide to all the children in Hatrack River, Goody Guester.”

“Not Arthur Stuart. Not if those pin-headed cowards on the school board have their way–”

“Why should they exclude your son? Is he over-age, perhaps?”

“He's the right age, Miss Lamer. What he ain't is the right color.”

Miss Larner waited, no expressionon her face.

“He's Black, Miss Lamer.”

“Half-Black, surely,” offered the teacher.

Naturally the teacher was trying to figure how the innkeeper's wife came to have her a half-Black boy-baby. Old Peg got some pleasure out of watching the teacher act polite while she must surely be cringing in horror inside herself. But it wouldn't do to let such a thought linger too long, would it? “He's adopted, Miss Larner,” said Old Peg. “Let's just say that his Black mama got herself embarrassed with a half-White baby.”

“And you, out of the goodness of your heart–”

Was there a nasty edge to Miss Larner's voice? “I wanted me a child. I ain't taking care of Arthur Stuart for pity. He's my boy now.”

“I see,” said Miss Lamer. “And the good people of Hatrack River have determined that their children's education will suffer if half-Black ears should hear my words at the same time as pure White ears.”

Miss Lamer sounded nasty again, only now Old Peg dared to let herself rejoice inside, hearing the way Miss Lamer said those words. “Will you teach him, Miss Lamer?”

“I confess, Goody Guester, that I have lived in the City of Quakers too long. I had forgotten that there were places in this world where people of small minds would be so shameless as to punish a mere child for the sin of being born with skin of a tropical hue. I can assure you that I will refuse to open school at all if your adopted son is not one of my pupils.”

"No! " cried Old Peg. "No, Miss Larner, that's going too far."

“I am a committed Emancipationist, Goody Guester. I will not join in a conspiracy to deprive any Black child of his or her intellectual heritage.”

Old Peg didn't know what in the world an intellectual heritage was, but she knew that Miss Larner was in too much sympathy. If she kept up this way, she'd be like to ruin everything. “You got to hear me out, Miss Larner. They'll just get another teacher, and I'll be worse off, and so will Arthur Stuart. No, I just ask that you give him an hour in the evening, a few days a week. I'll make him study somewhat in the daytime, to learn proper what you teach him quick. He's a bright boy, you'll see that. He already knows his letters– he can A it and Z it better than my Horace. That's my husband, Horace Guester. So I'm not asking more than a few hours a week, if you can spare it. That's why we worked up this springhouse, so you could do it and none the wiser.”