  Produced by Al Haines. [image] Cover art [image] Peggy THE GIRLS OF Or: Peggy Raymond's Success BY ILLUSTRATED BY BOSTON Copyright, 1912 All rights reserved First Impression, April, 1912 Electrotyped and Printed by CONTENTS CHAPTER
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Girls of Friendly Terrace CHAPTER I THE RETURN OF PEGGY The naming of the Terrace was a happy accident. It must have been an accident, for Jenkins Avenue crossed it at right angles, and just to the north ran Sixtieth Street. No one could have guessed when the Terrace was laid out that the name would prove so appropriate, and that the comfortable cottages would have such a cordial, neighborly look, as if nodding greetings to one another across their neat strips of lawn. When the name Friendly Terrace appeared on the street lamps at the corner there were no smiling faces visible at the front windows of the houses, no plump babies rolling over the lawns, no girls gathering on one another's porches, like robins in the boughs of a cherry tree, or strolling along the sidewalk, two by two, with their arms about each other's waists. The naming of the Terrace must have been a happy accident, or else an inspiration. There was usually a girl in evidence on Friendly Terrace at any hour of the day, and this morning there were three of them. They ranged from tall Priscilla, who was five feet seven, and mortally afraid of growing taller, down to Amy, who was almost as broad as she was long, and who was in a chronic state of announcing her determination to leave off eating candy next week. Ruth, who on this occasion served as the connecting link between the two extremes, was a slender girl, whose alert air told plainly that she was on the watch for something or somebody. "Once when my Aunt Fanny was coming to make us a visit," Amy observed reminiscently, "her train was six hours late. Just think if Peggy's train--" "Don't!" exclaimed Priscilla rather fretfully, and Ruth said with decision, "O Peggy's train couldn't be late, she's coming such a tiny bit of a way." "It might be if there was a wreck," Amy insisted triumphantly. "That was the matter when Aunt Fanny came. A freight train was wrecked just ahead of them, and they had to stand on the track for hours and hours. We waited luncheon for her till I was almost starved." The other girls exchanged amused smiles. The thought of Amy, undergoing the pangs of starvation, was likely to present itself in a humorous light. Amy saw the look and understood it, but was far from being offended. In point of disposition, Amy was as sweet as the confections she was always on the point of denying herself. An appreciative giggle showed that she understood her friends' point of view. "That's always the way," she said, with unimpaired cheerfulness. "Fat people never get any sympathy." She stopped abruptly, for Ruth had uttered a stifled scream and was pinching her arm. "The hack!" cried Ruth. "The hack's coming. Peggy's here." The non-committal vehicle, rapidly approaching from the direction of the Avenue, was mud-stained and shabby, but the appearance of Cinderella's golden coach would hardly have been the occasion for greater excitement. Ruth clasped her hands, her color coming and going. Tall Priscilla forgot her dignity and capered like a five year old, while Amy went tripping down the street to meet the hack, which, of course, passed her, reducing her to the necessity of following in pursuit, panting and very red in the face. All along the Terrace people came to the windows at the sound of wheels, for from the mothers down to the babies, everyone knew that Peggy Raymond was coming home that morning. Even Taffy, Peggy's dog, bounded out to add his mite to the general welcome. "Talk of the intelligence of animals," gasped Priscilla, as Taffy shot between Ruth and herself, narrowly avoiding upsetting both. "That dog knows it's Peggy just as well as we do. O why don't the man stop in the right place?" The mud-splashed vehicle came to a standstill midway between Peggy's home and the vacant cottage next door. Before it had fairly halted the girls were abreast of it. "Here we are, honey!" "Hurry up! We're dying for a sight of you." "O, don't be such a slow-poke. Even Taffy is losing patience." This last comment was unnecessary, as Taffy was speaking for himself, barking uproariously, and leaping about with an air of the keenest anticipation. The door of the hack opened, and very deliberately a girl stepped out. She was a tall girl, dressed in black, which added to her apparent slenderness. Her lips, which suggested a degree of self-repression, unusual in a girl of her age, were tightly set. She did not look in the direction of the crestfallen trio ranged along the sidewalk. "Why!" cried Amy, who had an odd fashion of announcing discoveries which had been apparent to everyone for some time, "It isn't Peggy after all." "We--you--I mean we thought you were somebody else," explained Priscilla, with considerably less than her usual self-confidence. The newcomer took as little notice of the stammered apology as she had of her boisterous welcome. Silently she assisted a lady draped in mourning to alight, and together they made their way to the empty cottage, which displayed in the front window the sign, "To Rent." The hack driver grinned, fully appreciating the little comedy, while the girls exchanged glances of mingled wrath and humiliation. Amy was the first to see the humorous side. She shut her eyes and staggered to the fence for support. Her peals of laughter must have been plainly audible to the girl who was trying the key in the front door of the vacant cottage, but the latter only tightened her lips and did not turn her head. Ruth and Priscilla, after staring blankly at Amy for a moment, joined in her laughter, though in a rather half-hearted fashion. "She looked so out of temper," gasped Amy breathlessly. "And we'd been calling her 'honey' and telling her we were dying to see her. O dear!" She wiped her eyes, and started on another burst of merriment which almost immediately died away in a gurgle of astonishment. "Peggy!" Three voices pronounced the name at once, with varied intonations of surprise and pleasure. So engrossed had they been that they had not noticed the arrival of a second hack, which with magical suddenness had spilled out upon the sidewalk a large girl and a small one, to say nothing of a motley collection of suit-cases, hand-bags, bundles and umbrellas. Settling with the hackman delayed Peggy a half-minute, and the girls arrived at the gate as soon as she, but she waved them aside. "First kiss for mother," Peggy cried, and shot straight as an arrow into the arms of the lady who stood waiting on the steps. There was a long clasp and more kisses than one, and none of Peggy's friends thought the less of her for that loyal rush for the one who loved her best. It was no wonder that Peggy Raymond's return was an event on Friendly Terrace. She was the sort of girl you could not see without wishing you knew her, and could not know without beginning to love her. From her reddish-brown top-knot down to the tips of her toes she was bubbling over with life and joyous energy. It was a nice world, Peggy thought, full of nice people. Every to-morrow was stored for her with wonderful possibilities, as the yesterdays were full of sweet recollections. Complaining, discontented people wakened in her the same sorrowful wonder she felt when she saw a blind man feeling his uncertain way along the street. Indeed, to Peggy discontent seemed another and more dreadful form of blindness. "Come into the house, all of you." Peggy was making up for the brief delay by kissing everybody twice around. "Hasn't Dorothy grown, girls? Wouldn't you think she was more than four years old? What are you doing, Dorothy darling?" "I'm wipin' off kisses," Dorothy replied with great distinctness, scrubbing violently at her rosebud of a mouth. "'Cause I don't like kisses to stick on, 'cept my mamma's." "She says that because she's forgotten you since last year," Peggy explained excusingly. "She'll be real friendly after a day or two. O Amy, dear, you mustn't try to lift that heavy suit-case. It weighs as much as you do." "I'm afraid not. I've gained three pounds since you went away," Amy replied dolefully. "Next week I'm going to stop eating candy, and begin to walk ten miles a day." Everybody laughed, for, when hearts are light, old jokes serve as well as new ones. They streamed into the house, a laden procession, and piled Peggy's belongings in the middle of the living-room. Then they pulled her down on the window-seat, chafing under the undeniable difficulty of evenly dividing one girl among three. "I'm so glad to see you, I could just eat you up," Amy declared, seating herself on Peggy's knee, as each of the others had preempted a side. "And to think of your staying six weeks, when you said you'd only be gone a month." "I hated to leave Alice," Peggy's face clouded for a moment, as she spoke her sister's name. "She isn't a bit well. You know we are going to keep Dorothy with us for a while. She's so full of life that she's a tax on her mother." "I stood on a tacks once," observed Dorothy, suddenly becoming interested. "It sticked into me, and I hollered." She frowned meditatively as she added, "I don't like you to call me a tacks, either." "It's another kind, darling. O girls, you don't know how good it seems to get back to the Terrace, where people know each other and are real neighbors. I don't see how Alice stands it." "Is it so bad living in a very big city?" Priscilla asked, rather doubtfully. "I believe I'd love it. I like crowds and noise and something happening every moment." Peggy shook her head with decision. "Just wait till I tell you. Alice lives in a flat, and there's only one woman in the building whom she'd know if she met her on the street. One morning while I was there we heard the greatest commotion in the flat just over ours. Somebody screamed, and then we could hear somebody else hurrying around right over our heads, and then there was the sound of dreadful crying. The windows were open, you know, and we heard everything as plainly as you hear me." "Well, what had happened?" Amy demanded, as Peggy paused dramatically. "That's what we couldn't imagine. I wanted to rush right up first thing, but Alice said people didn't do that way in big cities, and that she didn't know the woman at all, though she thought the name on the letter box was Flemming. Well, the crying kept up till I couldn't stand it any longer. I just walked upstairs and knocked, and when the girl came to the door, I said I lived on the next floor and I was afraid that somebody was in trouble and could I do anything to help. "O girls!" Peggy's voice grew pensive at the remembrance of that sorrowful scene. "I never imagined anything so dreadful. The poor woman--her name was Fletcher instead of Flemming--had just had word that her little boy had been hurt by an automobile, and taken to a hospital. And she was so upset that she didn't know how to get ready to go to him, and the girl was so stupid that she didn't know how to help her. And I rushed around and found her hat and coat and put on her shoes for her--she was wearing slippers--and did everything, just as if I'd known her all my life. And then she wouldn't let me go, and I went along with her to the hospital. She told me afterward that she had only lived in the city a few years and hadn't made many friends. A few years!" repeated Peggy with fine scorn. "Why, if anybody on this Terrace was in trouble, even if she hadn't lived here more than six weeks, we'd all be flocking in to see what we could do for her." "Did the boy die?" asked Amy, missing the moral Peggy was trying to point, in her interest in the story. "No, indeed. He wasn't hurt as badly as they thought at first. He was home again before I left, such a nice boy, not far from Dick's age. O here's Dick now." Peggy's younger brother, Dick Raymond, coming in at that moment, said, "Hello, Peggy," in the most matter-of-fact manner imaginable and submitted with apparent resignation to his sister's kiss. But no one was deceived. Dick's admiration of Peggy was an open secret in Friendly Terrace. The boy was hot and perspiring. He had run all the way home from his music teacher's, so impatient was he for a glimpse of the dearest as well as the most remarkable girl in the world, as he firmly believed, and yet at the sight of her, he had only a "hello Peggy," and a shame-faced kiss. Luckily Peggy was not the sort of girl who needed to be told certain things. She understood without any explanation. "Guess we're going to have some new neighbors," Dick observed, looking out of the window, apparently glad of an opportunity to change the topic of the conversation. "Who? Where? The next house?" Peggy stood looking over her brother's shoulder, as two people came from the vacant cottage and moved toward the waiting hack. Her eyes dwelt approvingly on the slender figure of a black-gowned girl, carefully assisting the older lady into the carriage. "Girls!" Peggy's voice fairly tinkled, as she made the pleasant announcement. "It looks as if we might be going to have another girl on the Terrace. Won't that be fine?" The others exchanged dubious glances. "Always room for one more, I suppose," Priscilla said at last. "And she looks like such a sweet girl, too," Peggy continued, as the shabby hack rumbled off. "She had such a nice way of helping her mother--that is, I suppose it's her mother." Amy coughed in an embarrassed fashion, and Ruth said hastily, "We took her for you at first, Peggy. We were watching for your hack, you know, and hers came first." "I imagine she must have thought us very cordial to strangers," Priscilla added, choking down a laugh, as she remembered the contemptuous indifference of the girl who had received a welcome intended for somebody else. "I'm glad of that," said the innocent Peggy. "Because that may help them in making up their minds to come here. And I don't like to have a vacant house on the Terrace. It reminds me of a child shedding its first teeth. The more smiling and pleasant it looks, the more you notice that something is missing." From across the street somebody whistled, a rather peculiar whistle, long and piercing. Ruth jumped to her feet. "It's Graham," she said. "What is he doing home at this time in the morning? O, I wonder if luncheon really can be ready?" "Of course it can," Amy cried tragically. "I'm nearly starved. I couldn't eat any breakfast this morning, I was so excited because Peggy was coming." "You'll be over this afternoon, won't you, Peggy?" Priscilla asked as she rose to go, and her face fell slightly as Peggy answered, "Why, of course. I'll run in to see all of you." It was just a little hard for Priscilla to remember that her claim on Peggy was in no sense superior to that of the other girls. She was one of the people who liked to be first, and, though generous enough with her other possessions, she found it hard to share her friend. Yet there were moments when Priscilla acknowledged to herself that a fraction of Peggy's affection was worth more than the undivided devotion other girls had given her in the fervid friendships which, in a few weeks or months at the outside, had burned themselves out. Peggy was as good as her word. But when she crossed the street that afternoon, on her way to Priscilla's, she noticed that the sign "To Rent" had disappeared from the window of the house next door. "That means new neighbors, certain sure," thought Peggy hopefully. Nor did she guess what a new element her prospective neighbors were to introduce into the cheerful atmosphere of Friendly Terrace. CHAPTER II THE GIRL NEXT DOOR A delicious odor was gradually pervading the Raymond cottage, a spicy fragrance which of itself was suggestive of Peggy's return. For Peggy's accomplishments were of a practical sort. The crayon which adorned the wall of her mother's bed-room, and which represented Peggy's supreme achievement in the field of art, had been the subject of considerable discussion in the family. Dick insisted that a prominent object in the foreground was a Newfoundland dog, while his mother accepted Peggy's assurance that it was a sheep grazing, and refused to listen to the arguments by which Dick supported his position. As a musician, too, Peggy had her obvious limitations, but when it came to transforming the cold potatoes, and the unpromising ends of the roast left from dinner, into an appetizing luncheon, it would be hard to find Peggy's equal; while the fame of her sponge cake and her gingerbread had spread far beyond the confines of the Terrace. And since this is a practical world, with very commonplace needs, there is much to be said in favor of such accomplishments as Peggy cultivated. She moved about the spotless kitchen with a quick, light step, humming under her breath something which, if not exactly a tune, was, nevertheless, like the chirp of a cricket, or the purring of a tea-kettle, very pleasant to hear. In her blue gingham apron, with her sleeves rolled to the elbow, she looked decidedly businesslike, though the costume was far from being unbecoming. Indeed Dick, sitting on the window-sill, gravely observant of Peggy's occupation, noticed how the heat from the range had deepened the pink on his sister's cheeks, and told himself that Peggy was growing pretty. Not for worlds would he have said as much to Peggy herself, but, for all that, the discovery gave him the greatest satisfaction. "Put on plenty of sugar and cinnamon now," Dick advised from his precarious perch on the window-sill. "You'd ought to have tasted the cinnamon rolls Sally made while you were gone. She scrimped on the sugar and the cinnamon, you see, and you wouldn't have known what you were eating. What's the good of making cinnamon rolls at all, if you're going to scrimp?" "That's right, Dick," Peggy agreed. "If you're going to do anything, put enough into it so that it will amount to something when it's done." Peggy was not given to lecturing her younger brother after the fashion of some girls, but she had a habit of hanging little sentence sermons on pegs which chanced to be available--cinnamon rolls, in this instance. And Dick, who would have turned sulky in a moment if he had suspected Peggy of "preaching," looked thoughtful, and stowed the suggestion away for further reference. Peggy went on rolling, cutting, sifting on cinnamon with lavish hand and adding little dabs of butter until the second pan of rolls was ready for the oven. Then Dorothy, standing by the open door, made a startling announcement. "House is a-fire! House is a-fire!" "O Dorothy!" Peggy flew to the door, and turned in the direction in which the chubby finger was pointing. As she looked, the kitchen window in the next house was lowered and a cloud of black smoke escaped, accompanied by an odor which caused Dorothy to wrinkle her nose and say disgustedly, "Glad I don't live in that house." "They let something on the stove burn; beans, I guess," said Peggy, sniffing wisely. "It's dreadful trying to cook while you are getting settled after moving." She looked thoughtfully toward the house next door, which presented the forlorn appearance to be expected considering that the tenants had moved in only the day before. Through the uncurtained windows Peggy caught glimpses of incongruous groups of furniture, of step-ladders standing aimlessly in the midst of the confusion, of pictures leaning precariously against the wall. To Peggy the sight was like an audible appeal for help. "I might take them some of my cinnamon rolls," she exclaimed, turning to Dick. "Take who?" As long as Dick made his meaning clear, he was never troubled as to grammatical correctness. "Why, the next door people. It would make them feel as though they really had neighbors and, of course, I can't go over to see the girl till the house is settled." "If you'd been going to do that," Dick said rather reprovingly, "you ought to have baked more than two pans. But then," he added with an evident effort to be generous, "I guess they need them more than we do. Go ahead." The rolls came out of the oven just the golden-brown that Peggy wanted. Peggy might draw a sheep that looked like an own cousin to a Newfoundland dog, but she had the joy of a real artist in her cookery. With shining eyes she gazed upon the work of her hand. "They're perfect," she announced, with an unsuccessful effort at a judicial air. "They do look good enough to eat," Dick agreed. "Say, give me one. I'm hungry." "And I'm hungry, too," cried Dorothy, edging close. "When the next pan comes out," Peggy promised. "I'll run over with these so our neighbors will know what they've got to depend on for luncheon." She set her rolls on a plate, threw a napkin over them, and without stopping to remove her apron, crossed the yard to the next house. The kitchen window was still open, and as Peggy stood upon the steps she heard the sharp tinkle of broken glass. "There's something gone to smash. Dear me, what a time they're having," thought Peggy, wishing her acquaintance with the new arrivals was sufficiently advanced so that she could offer to lend her aid, for her capable fingers fairly itched to assist in bringing order out of the chaos within. She knocked, and, after waiting for some minutes, knocked again, this time a little louder. "Elaine!" a voice cried. "Elaine! Somebody's at the back door." "O dear!" someone else said distinctly, and Peggy's color heightened, even though she felt confident that the speaker's mood would change as soon as she knew her caller's errand. "So her name is Elaine," Peggy thought, as footsteps slow, and seemingly reluctant, sounded on the bare floors. "Such a pretty name." The door opened violently and a girl looked out. It was the same black-gowned girl Peggy had watched from her window a few days earlier, but, on this occasion, her appearance was decidedly less prepossessing. Apparently she had neglected to comb her hair that morning, or else her forenoon's occupation had been strenuous enough to obliterate all traces of that ceremony. Her apron was soiled. She wore an expression of weary discouragement, which seemed as incongruous with her girlish face as white hair would have done. The eyes she turned upon Peggy were anything but friendly, and yet at the sight of her, Peggy's heart swelled with a sympathy that was almost tender. "Good morning!" Peggy extended her offering with a cordial smile. "I know how busy you must be getting settled, and I brought you over a plate of rolls. I live--" "We don't care to buy anything this morning," said the girl, and made a movement as if to close the door. Peggy's face flamed to the roots of her hair. "O, you don't understand," she cried. "I'm a neighbor of yours. I've brought you over a plate of cinnamon rolls, I've just finished baking. They're not for sale." Elaine was a rather pale girl. But as Peggy finished her little speech, two spots of red showed in the other's thin cheeks. "We're not objects of charity, thank you," she said. The door shut with a slam. Peggy, her rejected offering in her hand, stood bewildered on the step. For a moment she battled with the temptation to push open the door and force the girl inside to listen to reason. With a choked laugh, that covered not a little humiliation, she realized the folly of such a proceeding and turned away. Peggy's eyes were absent as she entered the house. She took the second pan of rolls from the oven without feeling any disposition to gloat over their yellow-brown perfection. Then, remembering her promise to Dick and Dorothy, she put some of the rolls on a plate and carried them into the next room. Her thoughts were still full of the rebuff she had received from her new neighbor, and when she had set the plate of rolls on the table she stood with clasped hands, looking hard at nothing in particular, and frowning over her reflections. "How glad she is to see us!" "Yes, just notice her smile." "Probably those are city manners, girls. We'll have to get used to it." A volley of mocking laughter followed these observations, and Peggy started guiltily. "I didn't see you," she apologized, as three girls popped up from the window-seat and approached her. "Don't try to get out of it, Peggy," teased Priscilla, slipping her arm about Peggy's waist. "You know you can't be glad to see us with such a face." "O, Peggy! What delicious rolls!" Amy hung over the plate with an ecstatic gasp. "Don't they look as if they'd melt in your mouth." "Help yourself," Peggy cried. "All of you." "They'll make you fat, Amy," warned Ruth, extending a slim hand. "Priscilla and I can eat all we want, but you'll have to refuse. You know you're going to leave off eating candy." "Well, they're not candy, and, besides, I'd rather gain a few ounces than turn down such darlings," Amy replied recklessly. Suiting the action to the word she set her teeth in the golden-brown crust. "They're as good as they look," she announced indistinctly. "Say, Peggy, are these the kind you took over to the house next door? Dick said that was what you went out for." Peggy nodded, her face betraying the peculiarly guilty expression that sensitive people wear when fearing that they will be forced to betray the wrongdoing of someone else. Priscilla eyed her suspiciously. "Well, I don't see that there could have been a nicer introduction," Amy remarked with her mouth full. "How lovely it would be if all callers brought cinnamon rolls instead of visiting cards." "What happened, Peggy?" demanded Priscilla, reading her friend's tell-tale face as if it had been an open book. "Weren't they nice to you?" "Nice!" cried Ruth, flaring up at the mere suggestion of ill-treating Peggy. "Why shouldn't they be nice?" "Peggy's blushing," exclaimed Amy, announcing a discovery sufficiently obvious to the least discerning. "She's blushing as red as fire. Peggy Raymond, what has happened?" "It really wasn't anything," said poor Peggy, fairly cornered. "Only--" "Well?" "Only she didn't quite understand." "Who didn't? That snippy, disagreeable girl, who puts on such ridiculous airs of being better than other people?" Peggy's eyes widened over the vivid description whose appropriateness she was forced to admit. "I saw the girl," she replied hastily. "Her name's Elaine, I think." "We don't care about her name, Peggy. What did she do?" "At first she thought I'd come to sell the rolls, and she said they didn't care to buy anything." "Peggy a pedler! I never heard anything so funny!" Amy sat down on the floor to laugh, but her amusement did not communicate itself to the others. Ruth's face still wore a protesting frown, and Priscilla's eyes were flashing. "A pedler!" Priscilla repeated disdainfully. "She must be very observing. Well, Peggy. After you explained--" "That seemed to make it all the worse," admitted Peggy, finding a little relief, it must be acknowledged, in the sympathy called out by her confession. "She can't have been used to neighbors, that's sure. She said they weren't objects of charity, and shut the door in my face." An indignant explosion followed, when everybody talked at once. Then Dorothy bobbing up as expectedly as a Jack in a box, poured oil on the troubled waters by offering a suggestion. "Maybe they fought the currants was flies. I did till I bited 'em." "O, Dorothy, what a killing child you are!" cried Amy, giving way to helpless laughter, and this time she had plenty of company. Peggy was the only one of the quartet who made any effort to conceal her merriment, Peggy having a singular theory that children should be treated just as courteously as older people. She looked regretfully at the small, erect figure marching out of the room with an air of stately displeasure. "O dear!" she sighed. "I'm afraid we've hurt her feelings. Dorothy does hate to be laughed at." "Then she'd better give up making such speeches," remarked Amy, wiping her eyes. "But to go back to Peggy's new friend--Elaine--" "Yes, just to think of her slamming the door in Peggy's face," cried Ruth, whose customary gentleness had quite disappeared in resentment over Peggy's snubbing. "If she doesn't want neighbors she needn't have any. I move that we let her alone, just as much as if she lived down town somewhere." "We didn't tell you, Peggy," Priscilla exclaimed, taking up the tale. "But we found out the sort of girl she was the day you came. We thought it was your hack, you know, and we rushed to grab you the minute you stepped out, and we were all screaming for you to hurry, and when this girl got out we felt cheap enough to go right through the sidewalk." "Yes, we did," interrupted Amy. "If there had been an open coal-hole handy it would have taken me about five seconds to disappear." "The way she took it showed the sort of girl she is," insisted Priscilla. "Instead of smiling, or saying that it didn't matter, she acted as if we'd been so many hitching-posts standing in a row. Didn't see us or hear us, either. I knew in a minute that I'd never have any use for her if she lived here a thousand years." "That's just the way I feel," said Ruth. "Me, too," exclaimed Amy from the rug, and absent-mindedly she reached for another cinnamon roll. It was Peggy's turn. "O, girls," she pleaded, in tones of distress. "Let's not be in such a hurry to make up our minds. You see, we've hardly seen anything of her." "Quite enough," observed Priscilla. "And things were rather against her both times," continued Peggy, disregarding the interruption. "When we come to know her we may like her awfully well." A depressing silence implied that no one but Peggy herself thought such a result at all probable. "And, anyway," concluded Peggy, falling back on the supreme argument, "she hasn't tried living in Friendly Terrace yet. We don't know what that will do for her. Instead of letting her alone, I think we'd better show her what it means to have neighbors of the neighborly kind." It did not appear that a continuation of the discussion was likely to bring them into agreement. Amy tried changing the subject. "Do you know what this roll reminds me of?" she asked, looking thoughtfully at the fragments in her hand. No one could imagine. "The first time I ever tasted one of Peggy's rolls," Amy explained, "it was on a picnic at the Park. It was the time that Ruth fell into the lake, feeding the swans." "I'd forgotten the rolls, but I remember that picnic," Ruth said. "The picnics this year didn't seem like the real thing," she added disconsolately, "with Peggy gone." "'Tisn't too late for another," Priscilla cried. "Why not go to-morrow?" If the quartet had failed to agree on the subject of Peggy's next-door neighbor there was no lack of unanimity as far as the picnic was concerned. In five minutes it was arranged that Ruth was to bring the sandwiches and Amy the fudge, while Peggy had agreed to get up early and make some little sponge cakes. "You won't mind if I bring Dorothy, will you, girls?" Peggy inquired anxiously. "You see, she really does make a lot of extra work, she's such a mischief, and I don't want to leave too much for mother to do." It was the general opinion that Dorothy's presence would add to the gaiety of the picnic, and, after completing their plans, the friends parted with looks expressive of cheerful anticipation. But Peggy's bright face clouded over as she glanced a little later toward the next house, and saw, perched upon the top of a step-ladder, a slender, girlish figure, with an indefinable air of dejection and helplessness. "O dear! I shall be glad when she's lived in the Terrace long enough to be one of us," Peggy thought. "All the trouble is that we don't understand one another. As soon as we're acquainted everything will be all right, and nobody'll have to be left out." |
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