Chapter 3 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."

The door opened and a tall lady looked in. A white veil was tied over her grey hair, and she wore black gloves. In one hand she carried a feather duster, and the helpless air with which she handled this domestic implement, caught Peggy's attention at once. The sight of Elaine and Peggy, beaming at each other across the typewritten sheets, seemed to startle the new-comer. She made a movement as if to draw back, halted irresolutely, and murmured something unintelligible. Elaine came to the rescue, blushing vividly, quite as if, Peggy said to herself, she had been caught doing something out of the way.

"Mamma, this is a neighbor of ours, Miss--I don't know your name, do I?" She looked a little surprised at the discovery.

"Peggy Raymond," said the owner of the name with promptness.

"And this is my mother, Mrs. Marshall." The introduction completed, Elaine hastened to explain Peggy's presence, and the other girl could not free herself of the feeling that she found it necessary to excuse as well as to explain.

"Just think, mamma! One of the sheets of my--I mean one of these sheets flew out of the window, and she brought it back to me. Wasn't I fortunate? And wasn't she kind?"

"We certainly are much indebted to Miss Raymond," Mrs. Marshall remarked with a stateliness which took Peggy's breath away. "I regret that it is necessary," she continued impressively, "to apologize for my appearance. After being accustomed to the supervision of a house full of servants throughout married life it is extremely humiliating to me to be discovered engaged in the work of a parlor maid."

Peggy could think of no suitable reply to this speech. She perceived that Mrs. Marshall was one of the people who, having "come down in the world," persist in flaunting in the face of their acquaintances recollections of their past grandeur. She said hastily that nobody ever called her Miss Raymond, and she wanted to be Peggy to her new neighbors as well as to the rest of the Terrace. Then she excused herself, on the ground that she must look after Dorothy, while Elaine followed her to the door to say again, "I'm so much obliged. I can't tell you how much I thank you."

Dorothy was sitting on the porch steps, a subdued little figure. Her hair, crinkling tightly after its recent washing, stood out in all directions, giving it the appearance of a tuft of thistle-down just ready to fly away.

Peggy felt the fluffy golden crown thoughtfully. "Dry as the Desert of Sahara, isn't it?"

Dorothy compressed her lips and blinked. She strongly objected to being addressed in language beyond her comprehension, perhaps because she always suspected the people who used these terms of trying to make fun of her.

"And as long as your hair is dry, and your dress is clean, I've an idea, Dorothy darling. How would you like to go to the Park and hunt up the girls? They'll have had luncheon before we get there, but there'll be a-plenty left. There always is."

"Aunt Peggy!" screamed Dorothy, climbing to her feet with undignified haste. "I like you better'n butter-scotch, and better'n pink tooth-powder. Let's hurry."

And hurry they did. And which of the two enjoyed the gaieties of the picnic more, the big girl or the little one, it would be hard to say. But underneath Peggy's lightness of heart, and whole-souled participation in the afternoon's fun, a pleasant undercurrent of thought ran like a hidden stream, the consciousness that at last she had succeeded in establishing friendly relations with the girl next door.