Part 14

"Doesn’t it seem lovely to think you’re going to see Europe this summer?" continued Peggy enthusiastically. "I think you were sensible though, to travel all over this country first. O, dear! It would make me fairly envious if it were anybody but you. To think that I’ve hardly been out of the town I was born in, and here you go everywhere."

Peggy’s fancy sketches were beginning to be interesting, by virtue of their sheer audacity. Amy listened, a faint amusement showing through her air of perplexity.

"Won’t it seem funny to settle down in Germany to study your music, after your lovely summer? But I suppose you love that too, almost as much as travelling. That’s what comes of being a genius."

This time Amy was forced to bite her lips to keep from laughing. Musical appreciation had been left out of Amy’s composition. She could not recognize the most familiar air when she heard it hummed, and, as far as she could see, the only difference between a street band and a symphony orchestra was that one made more noise in proportion to the number of players. But even her amusement over the role of a musical genius, so unexpectedly assigned her, vanished when the red curtains parted and a tall woman came into the room.

The discovery of her callers appeared to surprise Madame Planchet. "My assistant neglected to inform me that anyone wished to see me," she explained, in what Peggy mentally denominated as a "mincing voice." "You wish your fortunes told, of course. I give several grades of readings, ranging in price from twenty-five cents to a dollar."

"I think the twenty-five cent ones will be all we can afford for to-day," said Peggy with an artlessness which would have made Amy smile, if the horror of her last visit had not been overshadowing her. "And please tell my friend’s fortune first. I want to know if she’s going to keep on being as lucky as she has been so far."

Amy surrendered her hand to Madame Planchet’s inspection, and Peggy noted with sympathy that the girl’s face was colorless. She also improved the opportunity to study the appearance of the unconscious fortune teller. The woman’s heavy, coarse face gave conclusive proof of bad temper. The lines about her mouth, the furrow plowed between her brows, something in the glance of her restless black eyes, all indicated to Peggy that she would not scruple to take a cruel revenge on the unlucky person who offended her.

"A very good hand." The voice was smooth. "I see a few illnesses in early childhood, but after the twelfth year there is no sign of sickness. You will live to a good old age and enjoy excellent health."

Amy’s gasp was so pronounced that Peggy thought best to distract Madame Planchet’s attention by dropping her umbrella. As the clatter subsided, she picked it up again and begged pardon.

"Other good fortune is in store for you," continued Madame Planchet. "I see a large amount of money coming to you soon. It is to be left you by a near relative. I should say a cousin, or possibly an uncle." She studied Amy’s palm with absorbed interest for a moment and started out on a new tack.

"You have remarkable gifts in the line of music. I see that through their cultivation a great future will be open to you. There is fame in store. You will study abroad, and earn laurels as a singer."

"Wonderful!" Peggy murmured abstractedly. And she was rewarded by a sudden convulsive twitch of Amy’s shoulders.

After emphasizing the fact that Amy had already seen much of the world and was to travel extensively in the near future, the fortune teller contented herself with a few prophecies which would apply with equal exactness to nine girls out of ten. She paused with a complacent air, for after following Peggy’s supposed clues she was very sure that she had hit the mark with unusual correctness.

Peggy’s fortune was the usual jumble. To tell the truth, she hardly listened, and apparently Madame Planchet was of the opinion that after doing so well by one of the pair it was unnecessary to put herself out to make shrewd guesses regarding the other. Peggy was glad when the monotonous voice ceased, and she could drop her half dollar on the table.

"It was well worth it," she said with a significance lost on the smiling Madame Planchet.

"If you young ladies should try the dollar readings," observed the fortune teller, pocketing the coin, "you would find them much more satisfactory. I describe your personal characters fully, showing you the weaknesses against which you should guard, and also the traits which should characterize your life partner. Kindly mention me to your friends. Good afternoon."

Once outside, the two stood looking at each other. "Well, Amy Lassell," Peggy cried, "if you’re not convinced now that that woman is a thorough-going, outrageous old fraud, I’ll wash my hands of you."

Amy had hardly recovered from her daze. "But why did she do it?" she persisted.

"Don’t ask me. Though I think I could make a fair guess. You said yourself that you laughed all the time she was telling Blanche’s fortune. I suppose she thought you were making fun of her art or science, or whatever she calls it, and she wanted to get even."

Amy straightened herself and drew a long breath, like one who lays down an intolerable burden. The face she turned on her friend was radiant.

"Peggy," she cried joyously, "let’s go down to Bird’s--I don’t care if I do look like a fright--and get a nut sundae."

*CHAPTER XX*

*AN EVENTFUL PICNIC*

For some time Peggy had been waiting anxiously for warm weather. Not that Peggy had any quarrel with the winter months. Her vigorous constitution responded joyfully to the challenge of the cold. When the snow "crunched" under her elastic tread, and the air was full of frost crystals, and the wind whistled boisterously, and played tricks with people’s hats and umbrellas, then Peggy’s eyes were brightest and the blood in her veins raced most jubilantly.

Peggy’s reasons for being impatient for spring’s return were not personal ones. They concerned the Dunn family. Various remarks let fall by Estelle, Isabel and the others, had indicated such incredible ignorance of the country, that at first Peggy could not believe that it was not assumed. Gradually, however, she had reached the conclusion that these children, living within a few miles of grass-covered acres and groves of trees, knew as little of either as young Hottentots might be supposed to know of the North Pole.

Along in February Peggy’s friends began to hear plans discussed for giving the Dunns a day’s outing in the country, as soon as spring should arrive in earnest. Little by little they had all come to feel a personal interest in the affair. Indeed "Peggy’s Dunns" had gradually grown to be almost a neighborhood possession, and more than one household had their welfare at heart.

When Peggy decided that the grass was green enough, the air balmy enough, and the orchard trees sufficiently like bridal bouquets to make it practicable to carry out her plan, she passed the word along the line. And in honor of the occasion Amy fell to making fudge, and Priscilla bribed Susan to undertake a batch of doughnuts which would go a long way toward satisfying the inner cravings of the picnic party.

Elaine had not expected to share in the fun. But when she came home one Friday evening to announce that, owing to the presence of calsiminers in the office, the next day would be a holiday, Peggy was inclined to regard the occurrence as an especial interposition of Providence. And truth to tell, the sequel did not cause her to change her mind in that regard.

"It’s perfectly heavenly to think that you can go with us. And now perhaps you can coax Grace into coming. It would do her any amount of good."

But Grace, though the change in her from day to day was almost as marked as that taking place in the springtime world, drew the line at chaperoning the Dunn family for a day in the country. The rest of the girls went along, Peggy, Priscilla, Ruth, Amy--now restored to her customary cheerfulness--and Elaine, who, after the long hours and close confinement of office work, found the prospect of a day in the open unspeakably alluring. Each girl had a child in charge, for though Francesca could not leave the factory Jimmy had succeeded in arranging his business affairs so as to take a day off, and the Dunn picnickers numbered five.

They were an odd quintet, as they climbed aboard the street car, for though "Peggy’s Dunns" were the first ones thought of along the Terrace when outgrown clothing was to be given away, Mrs. Dunn seemed to have a genius for putting the half-worn suit on the boy it could not fit by any possibility, and for dividing up the girls’ garments so that each should present as patched and piecemeal an appearance as possible. But, after all, the misfit coats and mismated skirts mattered very little, Peggy thought, since the faces of the company were beaming with anticipation.

Peggy had selected a charming picnic ground on the edge of a small lake, lying in a cup-shaped hollow, with woods for a background, where spring flowers palpitatingly awaited discovery, and with farmhouses accessible, where milk could be purchased, and other provisions, for that matter, if the contents of the lunch baskets gave out. Peggy, however, had no concern over this possibility, for to all appearances the aforesaid baskets contained ample provisions for fifty.

The Dunns knew what to expect. There was to be a lake, and woods, and wild-flowers, for Miss Peggy had said so, but that the terms meant little to them was proved when Estelle uttered an excited cry. "There’s the lake!"

The others joined in rapturously. "Ain’t it grand!" "O, my!" Peggy turned wonderingly.

"Lake! Why, we’re not nearly there. O, you poor children!" For Estelle’s grimy forefinger was pointing triumphantly at a puddle in an adjacent field, a pool perhaps ten feet across, its surface ruffled by a cheerful little breeze. "Well, there’s one comfort," Peggy thought. "They’ll be wiser before they get home."

When the real lake came in view, the Dunns were breathless with excitement. They climbed down from the street car on the edge of a green meadow and the children walked gingerly across the turf, looking about them apprehensively, as if on the lookout for the warning, "Keep off the Grass." Isabel, who had fallen a little behind, galloped up to Peggy with a spring beauty in her hand.

"Miss Peggy!" She was breathing hard, but whether from her run or from excitement Peggy did not know. "Miss Peggy, kin they put me in jail for that?"

"O, dear!" Peggy cried, an unaccountable lump appearing in her throat. "They won’t put you in jail for picking all the flowers you can carry home. Can’t I make you understand that everything here belongs to everybody?"

It was a very wonderful picnic. Jimmy Dunn had visited the city park, and boasted a proud familiarity with trees and birds. But the other children could not recover from their amazement at seeing trees that did not grow in rows, out of squares obligingly left in cement sidewalks for that particular purpose, while the unexpected discovery of a blue bird was as startling as the appearance of a blue rabbit would be to the majority of people. "I thought birds was brown," drawled Johnny Dunn. "They is down ’round us."

"Maybe they gets sooty," suggested Estelle wisely. "My, wouldn’t it be grand, though, if they’d get washed up, and be flying ’round all red and yaller and ev’ry color."

Luncheon was served shortly after their arrival. "I don’t know why it is," Peggy confessed. "But it always seems as if you couldn’t get fairly started on a picnic, till you’d had something to eat. I feel that way myself and I guess these children are just the same only more so." Accordingly they sat in a ring in the fresh young grass, and disposed of such quantities of sandwiches and doughnuts that the scientific estimate of the capacity of the human stomach was then and there proved incorrect, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Peggy expected that the gorged Dunns would find a period of inactivity necessary, but instead of stretching in somnolent attitudes under the trees when the moment arrived that they could hold no more, they scattered in all directions. As it seemed quite impossible that they should get into mischief or danger the girls left them to their own devices, and sat talking happily while the breeze brought the coolness of the little lake, and the fragrance of the apple orchards, mingled with more delicate scents, the perfume of the moist earth, the breath of tiny flowers fading unseen, perhaps, but making earth the sweeter for their blooming.

"I found some grand ones."

Peggy looked up smilingly into Estelle’s radiant face. Then she got to her feet rapidly, for the child’s hands were filled with early garden flowers, with several clusters of geraniums showing up dazzlingly among the more modest blossoms. "Where did you get them?" Peggy gasped.

"Over back of that house." Estelle gestured with her treasures in the direction of a snug-looking farmhouse standing on a rise of land above the lake.

"Don’t pick any more there, dear. I guess those flowers belong to the people who live in the house. But all the flowers in the woods, and growing around the meadows, belong to everybody." She made a grimace at the other girls, over the head of the unconscious Estelle. "I’ve got to go up to the farmhouse and explain matters."

"I’ll go with you," said Elaine, jumping to her feet, and the two started up the long slope, Peggy sighing penitently. "It was all my fault. I was so anxious those children shouldn’t think they were going to be arrested if they picked a dandelion, I guess I went a little too far the other way. Who would have thought that they would have stumbled on a garden first thing?"

The farmer’s wife, being indoors, had not noticed the rifling of her garden, but so far from displaying annoyance over Peggy’s explanations, she was manifestly interested. "I’ve heard tell," she replied, "that some of those city children set store by flowers to beat all. And she picked her hands full, did she? Didn’t know the difference between wildflowers and garden stuff? Well, well!"

But when Peggy, producing a not over-full pocketbook, made tentative offers to pay for the damage Estelle had wrought, the good woman’s protest waxed indignant.

"Now I’d like to know what you take me for? Pay for ’em? I’d be ashamed to look my husband in the face when he came in if I took your money." She went to the window and looked with interest down the long slope, to the slight figures moving with such joyous abandon. "All brothers and sisters, you say?"

"Yes, and there’s two others not here, a sister who’s about fourteen and the baby."

"And we haven’t chick nor child," said the farmer’s wife. The shadow that crossed her kindly face, as she stood watching the small flitting shapes, had not lifted when Peggy and Elaine said good-bye.

At the door Peggy had an idea, and halted. "There isn’t any boat that we could get around here, is there? I’d like to take those children out on the water if I could."

The farmer’s wife came to the door. "Why, we’ve got an old dug-out tied down under the willows. It leaks a little, but you’d have to load it with stone to sink it. We keep it there, ’cause it’s handier if we want to go to Mr. Miller’s, t’other side of the lake, to row across, than to go all the way ’round. ’Tain’t so easy rowing as it might be, but you’re welcome to it if you want it."

The ungainly craft, tied under the sheltering willow trees, did not look as if it would be so easy rowing. But the girls undaunted, took their seats, each with a pair of oars, and started bravely for the other shore, the water slapping the square end of the dug-out, as if the two were in a plot to make progress slow and difficult. The appearance of the boat was hailed with shrieks of delight by the Dunn family, who rushed to the water’s edge to view its advance.

"There’s room enough for all of them at once, if it wouldn’t be too heavy," Peggy remarked.

"O, I guess we can take them all," returned Elaine, tugging at her oars. "They’ll be satisfied if we just keep it moving, you know."

"They’re all waiting to welcome us." Peggy glanced at the row of motionless figures, ranged along the shore as if held spell-bound by the spectacle afforded by the stately craft and the toiling oarsmen. Then instinctively Peggy began counting, "Three, four, five. Where’s number five?"

"It’s one of the little girls that’s missing, Estelle or Isabel. I can’t tell them apart." Elaine’s eyes travelled from the waiting row, across a clump of trees reaching to the water’s edge, on to the cleared acres belonging to the Miller farm. Then she uttered a startled exclamation.

"Peggy! See that child! Will she know enough to let them alone?"

"What? Where?" Wildly Peggy’s eyes followed those of her friend, and at the sight which had prompted Elaine’s frightened question Peggy rested on her oars, staring blankly ahead.

Against the green of the hillside rows of little white boxes stood out in bold relief. Among them wandered Isabel Dunn, as Gulliver might have wended his way among the habitations of Lilliput, looking about her with a curiosity that betrayed no twinge of timidity.

"Bee-hives!" Peggy gasped. "And I suppose she never heard of such a thing as a bee-sting. O, if she’d only look this way!"

But Isabel Dunn was too absorbed in her own discovery to have any eyes for the pageant on the lake, so attractive to the other members of her family. She stood absorbed in front of one of the hives, watching the busy occupants with an interest which owed part of its zest to the fact that here was something of which Miss Peggy had said nothing. Out in the country folks made houses for bugs to live in. She wondered that Miss Peggy had failed to comment on such surprising philanthropy.

Heedless of the line-up of the Dunn family, eagerly anticipating a row, the girls turned the boat toward the absorbed student of nature. Apprehension put fresh energy into their stroke. The dug-out toiled ahead at what was really a surprising rate of speed. The little Dunns, disappointed, joined in a howl of protest. The sound reached Isabel’s ears, and she turned, inadvertently stumbling against a hive. An instant later, her knowledge of natural history was increased by a significant item, in a fashion to impress it on her memory indelibly.

Shrieking wildly, Isabel started down the slope, the enraged bees in pursuit. Peggy and Elaine had thought they were pulling their hardest but at the sight of the child’s danger the dug-out seemed fairly to leap ahead, like a lazy horse pricked with a spur and roused to unwonted speed.

Down the hill came Isabel, gaining momentum with every step, driven to frenzy by the darts of her relentless pursuers. Whether the blue lake seemed a refuge, or whether she would have rushed with equal blindness into flames, it is impossible to say. But it is certain when she reached the water’s edge she kept on running, with the result that in an instant she had splashed out of sight, while the boat was still some distance away.

"Pull!" gasped Peggy. "Pull hard!" But she would have done better to save her breath, for Elaine, her lips parted, showing her clenched teeth, was putting into each stroke every ounce of energy at her disposal. In an appallingly short time, a tow-colored head came to the surface of the water and again disappeared.

"A little harder on the right oar," warned Elaine. Again she set her teeth and pulled. Again the mop of drenched hair showed on the surface of the water and went under. The girls watched to see it come in sight again, but it did not reappear.

"She’s not coming up." Elaine rose in the boat, kicking off her low shoes, and unfastening her heavy walking skirt. Then she went over the side with the ease and celerity of the practised swimmer. Peggy, who had not added swimming to her many accomplishments, and had watched for Isabel’s reappearance in an agony of helplessness, felt hope revive. Elaine seemed so sure of herself that it was impossible not to share in her confidence.

The little group on the shore had discovered what was happening. The children ran about crying shrilly. Above the sound of their frightened voices rose Amy’s lamentations as she wailed, "O, why didn’t I watch her! O, why didn’t I watch her!" Not that Peggy spared time just then to interpret the medley of sounds beating upon her ears. She saw nothing but the placid water, heard nothing but the sound of the little ripples breaking against the boat’s side.

Elaine came to the surface, after some seemingly interminable seconds, spluttered, filled her lungs and went under again. Peggy, white and shaking, sat crouched in her seat. O, those crawling seconds, that terrible waiting, the ghastly uncertainty. She felt the scented breeze in her face, and dimly realized that overhead the sky was blue. A snatch of bird-song dropping to her ears made her suspense seem unreal. It could not be that this dreadful thing was happening, while all the world around was unchanged.

Peggy came out of her trance when Elaine’s dripping head cleaved the blue water. This time Elaine did not come alone. Her left hand was supporting a limp little figure, whose hair floated on the surface of the water like yellow seaweed. Half a dozen strokes brought Peggy alongside the pair. Leaning over, she took Elaine’s burden from her. The head that swayed like a broken flower, the open, unseeing eyes, the colorless face, seemed to her inexperience proof that the worst had happened. She sat like one stunned while Elaine gripped the dug-out and pulled her dripping self over the side.

"Quick, Peggy!" Elaine’s teeth were chattering, for though the sun was bright the water of the little lake still retained a coolness suggestive of melting snow. "Quick! We must get her to the house, as soon as we can, and get to work."

The suggestion that something still could be done, put new life into Peggy. It is quite certain that the clumsy dug-out made record time in reaching the landing. The farmer’s wife was waiting for them there, and she took the unconscious child in her motherly arms, and almost ran up the slope, while the girls followed, Elaine walking with difficulty in her wet clothing, Peggy weak from fear.

Fortunately for them all the suspense was nearly over. For the farmer’s wife had hardly begun her work of resuscitation when a soft little sigh escaped from the child’s blue lips. A minute after she opened her eyes. Apparently it was too great an effort to be prolonged, for immediately she closed, them again. But the flutter of the lids was enough to render Peggy limp with relief and thankfulness.

"There! There! Have a good cry if you feel like it," exclaimed the farmer’s wife, bustling about. "There ain’t nothing like a good cry, if anybody’s been all keyed up. I’ll get some hot milk down her, and she’ll be all right. But your friend had better be getting out of her wet things, or she’ll be coming down with something. ’Tain’t too late yet for pneumonia."