“In less than twenty-four hours Elaine will be here.”

“You’ve been saying that for a week,” Priscilla commented tartly. The two girls had the porch to themselves, Priscilla stretched her lazy length in the hammock, while Peggy had curled herself into the biggest chair in a position which only a kitten or a school girl could by any possibility consider comfortable. Life at Dolittle Cottage was not favorable to tÊte-À-tÊtes, and Priscilla found ground for a grievance in the fact that on one of the rare occasions when they were alone together, Peggy should occupy the time in discussing the approaching visit of another friend. Though Priscilla had been making a gallant fight against her besetting weakness, it occasionally took her off her guard.

“If I’ve been saying that for a week,” observed Peggy with unruffled good nature, “I’ve been talking nonsense. For this is the first day it’s been true.”

“Don’t be silly, Peggy. You know perfectly well what I mean. For a week you haven’t been able to talk of anything but Elaine’s coming.”

Peggy made no reply. There was a critical note in the accusation which she found vaguely irritating, and it seemed to her the wisest course to let the matter drop where it was. But Priscilla was in the unreasonable mood when even silence is sufficient ground for resentment.

“Dear me, Peggy, I didn’t mean to reduce you to absolute dumbness. By all means talk of Elaine, if that’s the only topic of interest.”

“See here, Priscilla!” Peggy straightened herself, an unwonted color in her cheeks. For all her sweetness of disposition, she had a temper of her own, and was perhaps no less lovable on that account. “I thought we’d settled this thing long ago. You know I’m fond of Elaine,” she went on steadily, “and after her hard year, I’m delighted that she can have an outing up here with the rest of us. It isn’t anything I’m ashamed of, and it isn’t anything you’ve a right to call me to account for. I don’t care any the less for you because I care for Elaine, too.”There are few better tests of character than its response to frankness. A girl of another sort would have found in this straightforward speech additional cause for umbrage. Priscilla showed that her faults were only superficial after all, by her immediate surrender.

“Oh, Peggy,” she exclaimed, a choke in her voice. “You don’t need to tell me that. I don’t know what ails me sometimes. I should think you’d lose all patience with me.”

A tear splashed down upon her cheek, and Peggy, surprised and touched, leaned forward to pat the heaving shoulder consolingly. “Never mind, dear. We won’t say another word about it.”

“Just one more,” pleaded Priscilla. “You know, Peggy, that even when I’m hateful, I love you better than anybody in the world except my father and mother. But if you weren’t the dearest girl on earth–”

The screen door flew open, and slammed shut with an explosive effect which might have startled listeners unused to such phenomena. But in a cottage filled with young folks, doors are so likely to slam that this miniature thunder-clap did not cause either head to turn. It was rather the singular silence following which led Peggy to lift her eyes, and it was the expression on Peggy’s face which brought Priscilla to the realization that something out of the ordinary was taking place.

Claire stood by the screen door, her hands clenched, her face scarlet, her whole demeanor indicating the intensity of her struggle for self-control. Priscilla looked at her aghast, all sorts of alarming speculations racing through her mind. “Oh, what is the matter?” she cried.

“I heard every word.”

“You heard–” Priscilla broke off, and turned on Peggy a blank face. “Do you know what she means? What has she heard?”

“Oh, you needn’t try to get out of it,” Claire’s voice was suddenly shrill and rasping. “So Miss Peggy Raymond is the dearest girl on earth, is she, and you love her better than anybody in the world! It won’t do any good for you to deny it.”

“I haven’t any intention of denying it,” Priscilla replied, choosing her words with care. Instantly she knew that this meant the end of the friendship, which had by degrees become a burden rather than a joy. Claire’s exactions, her extravagant protests of an affection which in its expression proved itself to be nothing but self-love, had been the one discordant note in the summer’s harmony. To have the unreal bond dissolved, even in so drastic a fashion, came as a relief. “I haven’t any wish to deny it,” Priscilla repeated, as Claire gasped hysterically. “Everybody who knows me knows that Peggy’s my best friend.”

“And what about me?” The tragic tone of Claire’s inquiry threw its absurdity into temporary eclipse. “I’m nobody, I suppose. I can just be set aside when it suits your pleasure. And you called yourself my friend.”

“Why, Claire,” Peggy began, throwing herself into the breach with her usual irresistible impulse toward peacemaking, but, to the angry girl, this well-meant interference was additional provocation. “Oh, don’t you say anything,” she cried, turning savagely on the would-be pacificator. “You ought to be satisfied. It’s all your fault.”

“My fault!” The accusation was too preposterous to be taken seriously. Peggy could not keep from smiling.

“Oh, yes, I don’t wonder that you laugh,” exclaimed Claire, finding in that involuntary twitching of the lips new fuel for her wrath. “It’s what you’ve been plotting all the time, and now you’ve done it, so, of course, you’re satisfied.”Peggy’s impulse to laughter had passed. She turned rather pale, and sat silent, not deigning to reply to such a charge, while Claire rushed on recklessly. “Of course, after this, nothing would induce me to stay in this house another night.”

“I should hope not,” remarked Priscilla with deadly coldness. She might have forgiven Claire’s attack on herself, but such treatment of Peggy was not to be overlooked. The eyes of the two girls met like clashing swords.

But in spite of Claire’s declaration that nothing would induce her to spend another night at Dolittle Cottage, when it was ascertained that the first train on which she could take her departure left at ten o’clock next morning, she did not seek the hospitality of Mrs. Snooks’ roof, nor even suggest sleeping on the lawn. After her first paroxysm of anger was over, she became abnormally and painfully polite, begged everybody’s pardon for nothing at all, and proffered extravagant thanks for the simplest service. She declined to come down to supper on the pretext that she was too busy packing. And when Peggy carried up a well-laden tray, Claire received her with courteous protests.

“Oh, dear me! You shouldn’t have done that. I had no idea of your taking any trouble on my account. I’m not at all hungry, you know.” Claire would have given much for sufficient strength of will to refuse to taste another morsel of food in Dolittle Cottage, but being angry is, unluckily, no safeguard against being hungry.

As a matter of fact, the voice of Claire’s appetite was too insistent to allow her to give herself the satisfaction of haughtily declining to profit by Peggy’s thoughtfulness. “Just set the tray down anywhere,” she continued, packing ostentatiously, “and if I get time and feel like it, I’ll eat a mouthful.” And Peggy departed, relieved by her sincere conviction that no one in the cottage would go to bed without a satisfactory evening meal.

As Claire was to leave at ten, and Elaine arrived at eleven, it was but natural that the girls who were to meet the new arrival should accompany the departing guest on the four-mile drive to the station. Indeed, if they depended on the stage, it was necessary that they should go together, as this conveyance made but one trip a day in each direction. Peggy did not wish to delegate to any of the other girls the responsibility of meeting Elaine, whom she regarded as her especial guest, and since Claire had come to the cottage on Priscilla’s invitation, Peggy felt that it devolved on Priscilla to see her off, in spite of the unfortunate termination of the visit.

“As for seeing her off, I shall be glad enough to do that,” declared Priscilla, who, now that her tongue was loosed, was atoning for many days of repression. “But, Peggy, I don’t see how I can stand a four-mile drive with that girl.”

“I’ll be there too, honey, and with the stage driver listening to every word, we can’t talk about anything except the scenery. Please come, Priscilla. Don’t give her any excuse for thinking that you haven’t done everything that could possibly be expected of you.”

Accordingly, the stage calling the next morning found three passengers awaiting its arrival, and the keenly observant driver, who occasionally turned his head, and proffered an observation, in case the conversation languished, must have formed an entirely new conception of girls of seventeen. Had they all been seventy, and the merest acquaintances, they could not have treated one another with more precise politeness, nor have conversed with greater decorum. Altogether, Priscilla had some show of reason for referring later to the drive as “ghastly.” Unluckily, Claire’s train was thirty minutes late, and the tension was accordingly prolonged for that length of time. As Peggy attempted to make conversation out of such material as the weather and the time Claire would reach home, Priscilla was reflecting that if she were obliged to wait much longer she would disgrace herself either by laughing or by crying, or by indulging in both diversions at one and the same moment.

But the whistle sounded in time to save Priscilla’s hardly tried self-control. The girls shook hands primly. Peggy and Priscilla wished Claire a pleasant journey. Claire replied by effusive thanks. At length, to the relief of all three, she handed her suitcase to an obsequious porter and stepped aboard the Pullman.

“Now be ready,” Peggy cried, clutching Priscilla’s arm. “Wave your hand if she looks out.” But Claire did not deign so much as a glance at her late companions, and the train which bore her out of the heart of the green hills, carried her forever out of the lives of the two who watched her departure.

The girls seated themselves on one of the station benches to await Elaine’s train. Peggy was a little sober, for unjustified as she knew Claire’s suspicions to be, she could not help asking herself how it was that she had gained so little of Claire’s confidence in a summer’s association. And Priscilla’s face, too, was overcast, but for a different reason.

“Peggy,” she exclaimed abruptly, “do you know I feel as if I’d been looking at myself in the mirror.”

“Then you ought to feel more cheerful than you look,” returned Peggy with a sweeping glance, and a smile, designed to express her conviction that Priscilla was an unusually handsome girl.

But Priscilla was not to be turned aside by the little compliment. “It isn’t any reason to be cheerful. I mean, Peggy, that this affair with Claire has just helped to show me what I’m like myself.”

Peggy broke into excited protests, to which Priscilla listened unmoved.

“It’s exactly the same thing. I’ve been jealous of Elaine in just the same way she has been jealous of you. And both of us called it love, when all the time it was just the meanest kind of selfishness. I wonder why it is that your faults never look very bad till you see them in somebody else.”

“If you imagine that you’re like Claire Fendall,” interjected Peggy, seething with indignation, “you’re badly mistaken, that’s all.”

But glad as Priscilla would have been to accept the comforting assurance she shook her head with decision. “It’s exactly the same thing,” she insisted. “But I really hope–Why, Peggy, what’s the matter?”

If Peggy’s convulsive movement had not been sufficient to account for the startled question, the expression of her face was abundant ground for the inquiry. “Why, Peggy,” Priscilla repeated in real consternation, “what is it? What has happened?”

“I never thought of it till this minute. She’s spoiled everything.”

“Who? Claire? What has she spoiled?”

“Our play,” groaned Peggy. “It comes off on Tuesday, and has been advertised in the last three issues of the Arena. We can’t possibly find anybody to take her place. What are we going to do?”

“Dorothea Clarke played it last June. Why not telegraph for her to come up. We just can’t have a fizzle at the last minute.”

“Why, Dolly Clarke is in California! Somebody spoke of it in a letter only last week.” Peggy groaned again. “I wonder if Claire didn’t think that her going would spoil everything. Or if she just didn’t care.”

Priscilla was inclined to favor the latter hypothesis, yet even in her resentment she realized that any amount of criticism of Claire would not save the situation. Vainly the girls grappled with the problem, to end by looking at each other despairingly.

When Elaine stepped off the train at eleven o’clock she was immediately conscious of missing something in her welcome. It was not that Peggy did not seem glad to see her, for the steadfast eyes that met her own were beaming with affection. Priscilla too was unusually cordial. And yet Elaine missed something, the spontaneous overflowing of light hearts.

“What is it?” she asked, looking from one to the other, as the stage driver went for her little trunk. “Is anybody ill? Is anything wrong? Somehow you look–”

Peggy and Priscilla exchanged glances. Peggy laughed.

“We might as well tell her now as later. Perhaps when that’s off our minds, we’ll be able to think of something else. You know, I wrote you about the benefit we got up for Lucy Haines.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, we’re going to give the little farce we learned for commencement week. It happened that we four girls took all the principal parts but one, and Claire Fendall agreed to take that. You were at one of our rehearsals last spring, weren’t you? Well, this was Adelaide’s part.”

“Yes, I remember. The girl who was always losing her temper over things.”

“Well, unluckily, Claire lost her temper over something, and went home just an hour ago. And the play is for Tuesday night. We can’t possibly postpone it, because there is no way of getting word to the people. The paper only comes out once a week. Did you ever hear of anything so dreadful?”

Elaine was musing. “If I remember, it isn’t such a very long part.”

“Why, it isn’t as long as Priscilla’s or mine, but Adelaide is one of the leading characters. She couldn’t possibly be left out.”

“I didn’t mean that. I was only going to suggest–” Elaine hesitated, with a little of her old-time shyness. “I was only going to say that if you couldn’t do any better, I’d take the part.”

“Take the part?” Peggy looked at her friend in an amazement which temporarily obscured her gratitude. “But we give the thing Tuesday night.”

“Yes, I know.” Elaine smiled a little at the conflict of hope and incredulity written on Peggy’s expressive face. “But I really have a very quick memory, Peggy, though I don’t retain things as long as lots of other people. And before I came to Friendly Terrace I took part in school theatricals quite often. I can’t promise to distinguish myself, but I’m sure I can get through the part and save the day.”

And then, to Elaine’s secret amazement, it was Priscilla’s arm that went about her waist, and Priscilla’s voice that cried, with a thrill of sincerity there was no mistaking:

“Oh, Peggy, isn’t it splendid to have her here?”