Part 2

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."

*CHAPTER III*

*MAKING FRIENDS*

It was just as well, as things turned out, that Peggy had resolved on an early start the following morning. Dimly through the grey dawn she became aware of an elfish, white-gowned figure perched on the foot of the bed. Her sleepy questionings as to its identity were dispelled by a sweet, high-pitched voice.

"Now this is down to the sea shore, Aunt Peggy, and that’s the water where you are. Bime-by I’m going to dive and make a big splash."

Before Peggy could protest, Dorothy had carried out her intention, descending on her shrinking relative like an avalanche. "Kick, Aunt Peggy! Kick hard!" she shouted, disappointed at Peggy’s failure to enter into the sport, with the spirit due its dramatic possibilities. "That’s what makes the waves."

But Peggy was beyond kicking. When she had succeeded in dislodging Dorothy from a commanding position on her chest, she indulged herself in several deep breaths before saying plaintively, "O, Dorothy, why did you wake so early? It isn’t time to get up yet."

"It’s time to get up for a picnic day," insisted Dorothy. "And you’ve got to cook luncheon, Aunt Peggy, and can I wear my rubber boots and take my dolly and my blue celluloid comb?"

Further sleep was out of the question. Making a virtue of necessity, Peggy jumped out of bed, reflecting that this early start would give the frosting on her cakes a chance to harden. Getting Dorothy dressed was a process requiring time and patience, for the child was so excited by the festivities in prospect that she could hardly stand still long enough to allow a button to be popped into its rightful button-hole. Inventors interested in perpetual motion should have made a study of Dorothy. She interrupted the process of getting her fat little legs into their black stockings by so many fantastic capers that Peggy forgot the loss of her morning nap in helpless laughter, and the day began cheerfully after all.

By breakfast time the comfortable odor of sponge cake diffused through the house, told that Peggy had made good use of her time. It penetrated Dick’s bed-room, and that young man, under the mistaken impression that he was sniffing the fragrance of waffles, rose in haste and reached the breakfast table on time, an unusual feat for Dick, who dearly loved the last minutes in bed, and, as a rule, needed to be called three times before responding.

Dorothy was too excited to eat. She had made a collection of cherished belongings to take with her to the Park, and tact, as well as logic, was needed to convince her that the occasion did not call for a pink parasol or a tooth brush. A compromise was finally reached by virtue of which Dorothy agreed to leave all her belongings at home, with the exception of her "shut-eye doll," on the understanding that she was to be allowed to help in packing the lunch basket. This ordinarily prosaic task proved quite exciting that morning, owing to Dorothy’s propensity to smuggle in such articles from the sideboard as appealed to her as attractive and desirable.

A little after nine the girls began to arrive. Priscilla and Ruth came up the walk at almost the same minute, and they all settled themselves to wait for Amy. It was understood that they must always wait for Amy, though, singularly enough, Amy always had a brand-new reason for her invariable delays. Either her shoe-string broke at the last minute or someone called her up on the telephone, or her hat pins had disappeared, or some other unforeseen event interfered with her innate propensity to promptness. Amy’s friends listened with cheerful disrespect to her latest excuses, and Amy was the only one of them all who accepted them at their face value, and honestly believed herself the soul of punctuality.

At quarter of ten Amy appeared, puffing a little, to show how she had hurried, and explaining that the fudge had refused to harden. The other baskets were grouped upon the porch and the girls sat in a row on the steps, discussing some of the interesting events which had taken place along the Terrace during Peggy’s absence. At Amy’s approach Peggy jumped briskly to her feet.

"We’re all ready now," she said. "Where’s Dorothy disappeared to? O, Dorothy! We’re going to start now."

There was no answer. "Dorothy!" Peggy called again, "Come quick. The picnic’s going to begin."

This assurance was effective. At the end of the hall appeared a mysterious figure which moved toward the door with hesitating and uncertain steps. A weird, white drapery concealed its face, and fell in flowing folds to its shoulders. Amy was the first to perceive its appearance and she let fall her basket and squealed.

"What is it?" she cried wildly, as Peggy, at the other end of the porch, turned upon her a startled countenance, "O, what is it?"

"What’s what?" Peggy flew to answer her own question. At the sight which had alarmed Amy she stood as if petrified, her lips apart, and broken fragments of sentences escaping at intervals.

Meanwhile the slow-moving figure had reached the door. From beneath the mysterious drapery came the sound of a stifled wail. Peggy came to herself with a start.

"Dorothy!" she cried. "What have you got over yourself?" She touched the drapery with shrinking fingers. It was sticky, clinging. The fragment she touched fell off at her feet.

"I smell--yeast," exclaimed Peggy sniffing. "Yeast!" She looked about her wildly. "Girls, it’s bread-sponge."

"She’ll smother," exclaimed the practical Priscilla, and forthwith clawed an opening in the sticky mass, through which Dorothy’s face looked out. It was a solemn face at that moment. A suspicious trembling of the lips told that the tears were not far away.

"I--I don’t like Sally," faltered Dorothy. "She put somefing in a pan, up high. And when I pulled, it covered me all up."

"That’s the end of the picnic, girls." Peggy spoke with forced calm. "The end, as far as I’m concerned. Bread-sponge all the way from here to the kitchen. Bread-sponge in her hair and her eyebrows."

"_I_ don’t care, Aunt Peggy," cried poor little Dorothy. "I’d just as soon go to the picnic all sticky."

It was a melancholy ending for so many cheerful plans. The girls protested that the picnic without Peggy would only be an aggravation. They suggested putting it off till another day. But Peggy, usually distinguished for her sweet reasonableness, was not in a mood to make the best of things.

"She’d only get into something else, girls," she insisted. "The glue pot or the molasses jug. Even if the fudge would be just as good to-morrow, you can’t say as much for the sandwiches. Go along and enjoy yourselves."

While three girls wended their disconsolate way toward the Park car, a still more dejected procession of two climbed the stairs to the Raymond bathroom. Mrs. Raymond, hearing the sound of Dorothy’s stifled crying, came out to inquire the cause of the trouble, and uttered a horrified exclamation at the sight of her small granddaughter. Although divested of the greater part of the mass of bread-sponge, enough adhered to Dorothy’s plump person, to give her a most unique appearance. Mrs. Raymond patted the round, tear-stained cheek, and cast a comprehending glance at Peggy’s overcast face.

"I wish you had gone with the girls, dear," she said. "I could have attended to this little mischief, and it’s hardly fair that you should lose your fun."

"Just as fair as that you should spend your morning scrubbing Dorothy," Peggy returned. "You ought to know I wouldn’t leave it for you." Then with the honesty which was one of Peggy Raymond’s charms, she added, "I suppose I might better have gone than stay at home and act like a martyr. Never mind, mother. There’ll be more picnics some day."

The process of repairing damages was a slow and tedious one. At intervals Dorothy wept copiously into the bath tub, and uttered broken promises to the effect that next time she would stand in a corner and not move till the hour of starting arrived, "And I sha’n’t like Sally never any more," sobbed Dorothy, who had a habit, not unknown among older girls, of holding other people responsible for her escapades, "’cause she put that up high where it could fall all over me."

The last traces of glutinous matter were at last removed from Peggy’s charge. Arrayed in a clean gingham, with a bath towel over her shoulders, Dorothy was set out on the porch, where the sun could dry her golden hair. Peggy gave her attention to repairing damages elsewhere, and when she returned after twenty minutes’ absence, Dorothy’s hair was curling all over her head, in a flossy yellow snarl, while in her hand she held a typewritten sheet of paper.

"What’s that, Dorothy?" Peggy asked, feeling the curly head for signs of dampness.

Dorothy reflected. "It’s a letter, I fink," she replied, obviously giving the explanation which seemed most plausible, but speaking doubtfully.

"Let me see!" Peggy took the sheet in her hand, and began its perusal, her eyes opening wide and wider as she read.

"’honor is at stake,’ replied the earl, his hand seeking his sword. The Lady Vivian uttered a cry of anguish, and sank fainting into the arms of her attendant."

"Why, how funny," Peggy broke off in the midst of the thrilling narrative to ask a practical question. "Where did this come from?"

"I guess a angel brought it," replied Dorothy, after due reflection.

"O, you goosie!" Peggy’s laughter rang out blithely, and Mrs. Raymond upstairs, overheard and drew a relieved sigh. For to have Peggy low-spirited produced much the same effect as when the sun goes under a cloud.

"Where did you find the paper, dearie?" coaxed Peggy. "The wind blew it from somewhere, didn’t it?"

Dorothy shook her head with vehemence, causing extreme agitation among her frizzled locks. "No, it didn’t blow from anywhere. It just camed." It was evident that little information could be extracted from this source and Peggy fell back upon her own wits.

"It’s typewritten. There isn’t anybody around here who has a typewriter, except Harry Rind, and he wouldn’t be writing about earls and swords and things. I wonder--"

Peggy broke off, and stared at the next house. The windows upstairs were open. It would be an easy matter for a sheet of paper, more enterprising than its associates, to take a little excursion into the outer world. At the same time, Peggy disliked the idea of facing Elaine again, to inquire if the typewritten sheet was her property. If it happened to belong to someone else, the chances were that Elaine would be as uncompromisingly disagreeable as she had been the day before. And to be snubbed twice in two days was too much, even for Peggy.

"I don’t believe it’s worth anything anyway," thought Peggy, glancing at the sheet in her hand. Lurid sentences caught her eye. The ladies in the narrative seemed given to shrieking and fainting, while the gentlemen had a propensity for deadly combat. A sturdy strain of common sense in Peggy’s make-up caused her lips to twitch over this cheap tragedy.

"It sounds silly," was Peggy’s final verdict. "I don’t believe it’s worth anything, but, after all, it belongs to somebody, and whoever wrote it thinks it’s nice, I suppose. And--well, at the worst, she can’t do more than shut the door in my face."

She marched down the yard, head up and shoulders back, in soldier fashion. Indeed Peggy felt very much as if she were leading a charge. Like most popular people, Peggy shrank from discourtesy. She was so accustomed to being liked that any indication of unfriendliness came with a sense of shock. The girl who had refused one neighborly kindness in so unpleasant a fashion was not likely to have undergone a change of heart in a little over twenty-four hours.

With a sense of bracing herself to face the worst, Peggy knocked at the kitchen door and stood waiting. Elaine herself answered the summons. The look which crossed her face seemed to say, "What, you here again?" but Peggy did not wait for her to put the ungracious sentiment into words.

"I don’t know whether this belongs to you or not," she said hastily, "but I thought perhaps it did, because hardly anybody on the Terrace has a typewriter." She handed the sheet to Elaine and prepared to back away.

But Elaine’s formality had vanished with the understanding of Peggy’s errand. "Page six," she exclaimed in tones of dismay, "O, I wonder where the rest are."

"I didn’t see but this one, but then, I didn’t really look. When I came out on the porch my little niece had it in her hand. She said an angel brought it."

"An angel?" Elaine forgot her anxiety for a moment and laughed outright; a little bubbling laugh which did wonders in advancing the acquaintance of the two. Then her thoughts reverted to the paper, which in Peggy’s opinion she prized unduly. "They must have blown out of one of the upstairs windows," she exclaimed.

"Perhaps only that one blew out. You look upstairs, and I’ll see if there are any more scattered over the grass," Peggy suggested obligingly. As it happened, the search of both girls was successful. Elaine came downstairs, her hands full of sheets she had gathered from the floor, and out of the number only one proved to be missing. This one, numbered four, Peggy had found winding itself about the trunk of a spindling young peach tree in the front yard.

"Now let’s count them again and be sure they’re all here," Elaine said eagerly. "One, two, three, four."

"Five, six, seven, eight," concluded Peggy. "That’s all, isn’t it?"

"Yes, that’s all. O, how lucky I am to find them."

"O, isn’t it splendid."