Peggy Part 10

It was a forlorn afternoon; but Peggy stuck to her work manfully, and had the satisfaction of closing the book at last with the feeling that she was sure of it now, however things might be in the morning under Miss Pugsley's hostile eye.

There was still a little time left before supper. She ran out to the lawn, hoping to find Grace Wolfe still there, but she was disappointed.

The only occupants of the lawn were half a dozen soph.o.m.ores cl.u.s.tered together at one end. Blanche Haight was among them, and at sight of Peggy she turned her back pointedly, and whispered to the others. They turned with one accord and stared at Peggy, with a cool insolence that made her blood boil within her and surge up in angry red to her forehead. She could not do anything about it; they had a right to stare, if they had no better manners. She returned the look for a moment, then turned away with a sore and angry heart. Fortunately, at this moment came out two cla.s.smates of her own whom she knew slightly,--mild, pleasant girls, with no special traits of interest, but still friendly and approachable. They were going to play tennis, and invited Peggy to join them; so she had a good half-hour of exercise and pleasure, and came in with rosy cheeks, and with the cobwebs all blown away for the time.

At eight o'clock Peggy was standing before her gla.s.s, putting a last touch to her hair, and surveying her image with some anxiety. Did she "look nice?" Peggy had as little personal vanity as a girl could well have; but she had learned from her cousin Margaret that it was part of her duty to look as well as she could. Her cousin Rita would have had her go further than this.

"Study, my child," Rita would cry, "to be beautiful! Let it be your dream by night, your thought by day!" And, in all kindness, Rita would try to teach her how to cross her feet so that they might look slender, how to extend her little finger when she raised her hand, "not too much, but to an exact point, _cherie_!" how to turn her head so as to show the lines of the neck to advantage. But Peggy's own good sense, aided by Margaret's calm wisdom, had told her the inappropriateness of Rita's graceful airs and poses to her own st.u.r.dy personality. She was to look nice; more she could not aspire to. So here she was to-night, in a pretty blue silk waist, with a serge skirt of a darker shade, her hair smoothly braided in one mammoth "pigtail," and tied with blue ribbons, her neat collar fastened with a pretty pearl brooch. Thus attired, our Peggy was truly pleasant to look upon; and her "Is that right, Margaret?" brought a little satisfied nod of reply from the smiling image in the gla.s.s.

Drawing near the Owl's Nest, she heard a hum of voices, and straightway her heart sank again, and shyness possessed her. There was a crowd there! They would all be juniors and seniors, and she the only freshman among them. How could she go in? Oh! she almost wished she was up in the other corridor with the younger girls!

But at this moment the door opened, and Bertha's kind face looked out.

"Here you are, Peggy!" she cried, cordially. "Come along; there's plenty of room, for I've saved a place for you. Come!"

For a moment Peggy hung back, and knew how Lobelia Parkins felt; then she made an effort, and followed Bertha into the room.

The Owl's Nest was a corner room, with windows on two sides. It seemed to be furnished chiefly with books. There were the two bra.s.s beds, of course, the twin bureaus, the desks, and table. All of these, except the beds, were covered with books; bookshelves took up most of the wall s.p.a.ce, though there were two or three good pictures, among them a great photograph of the sea, that almost dashed the spray in one's face, so perfect was it. It was at a later visit that Peggy observed the books; now, she was conscious of nothing save the girls. The room was certainly full of them. There were three on each bed, curled up in every variety of picturesque and comfortable att.i.tude; two sat on one of the bureaus, having pushed books and toilet articles up into a toppling and highly perilous mountain behind them; four more crouched somehow on the rather narrow window-seats. The rest were on the floor, except two early birds, who had come in time to get the two chairs. The floor was made comfortable with sofa-pillows, borrowed from the whole length of the corridor. Altogether, there might have been twenty girls in the room, and every girl was, or seemed to be, talking as fast as her tongue could move.

Peggy was hailed with a bird-like call from one corner.

"My Veezy-vee! come here, Peggy Montfort, and sit by me."

It was Viola Vincent. She was curled up at the head of one of the beds.

She wore the prettiest pink tea-gown imaginable, and her hair was a wonder of puffs and curls.

"Come here!" she repeated, patting the pillows. "Lots of room; miles!

Let her come here, Fluffy!"

"Yes, she shall, in a minute, V.," replied Bertha. "But first,--Toots, here's Peggy Montfort!"

The Snowy Owl came swiftly out of the closet, where she had been performing some mystic rite; she took Peggy's two hands in hers, and held them in a warm, firm grasp that was the very soul of cordiality.

"I'm so glad!" she said. "How's the poor little thing? Better? I'm sure you did her a great deal of good."

"Oh, no!" stammered Peggy, pleased and confused. "I couldn't really do anything; but she is feeling better."

Gertrude Merryweather nodded wisely. "My dear, you can do a great deal for her!" she said. "We'll have a talk sometime; no chance now. Only, Bertha has been telling me things, and I'm so glad you are in our street! There, now V. shall have you."

Judge of the glow at Peggy's heart, on these words from the Junior President, the best-loved girl--or so it was said--in the whole school.

Those foolish tears actually got half-way up to her eyes,--only they were very different from the last tears; but fortunately Viola's high-pitched babble drove them back again.

"My _dear_! How nice you look! perf'ly _fine_! doesn't she, V.? Say, that's a dandy pin you've got on, simply _dandy_! There! isn't this too quaint for anything? You comfy? so'm I! Room, my dear? gallons of room!

I haven't seen you for an age; where have you kept yourself? I looked into your room, though, and it's perf'ly _fine_! I told you it would be, when you had things fixed. Your chintz is too perfectly sweet for anything; isn't it, V.? We were simply cold with envy, weren't we, V.?"

"Do cackle for yourself, if you must cackle, V.!" responded Vivia Varnham, who sat on the same bed, a little lower down. "I can't hear myself think, you make such a noise."

"No, really?" cried Viola. "But that must be such an advantage sometimes, V. But, say! we came here to hear the Snowy talk, didn't we?

She hasn't had much chance yet, has she? Are you ready to talk, Snowy?

Oh, you duck! it is too perfectly enchanting to have you back again. I haven't lived since you went away, have I, V.? I've been simply a vegetable, haven't I, V.? Potatoes, my dear, are lively compared to me.

_Are_ you ready to talk, Snowy?"

"If you are ready to have me," replied the Snowy Owl, laughing. "First, however--here!"

She produced a mammoth box of "marshmallows," and handed it around. It was received with a shout.

"Toast 'em!" cried one. "Hat-pins!" cried another. There was a movement toward the gas-jet; but Bertha Haughton checked it decidedly. "You have come here to hear the Snowy tell!" she said. "It's a long tell, and if you begin toasting now, there won't be time. Tell first, toast afterward! that's what I say!"

"Hark to the Fluffy! she speaks well!" cried the girls. There was silence; and Gertrude Merryweather, sitting on the floor, with her hands clasped around her knees, began her "tell."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GRAND TELL IN THE OWL'S NEST.]

CHAPTER VII.

WEDDING BELLS.

"To begin with, girls, this is Fluffy's idea, not mine! Of course none of you ever saw our Hildegarde, so I didn't suppose you would care particularly; but when I was telling the Fluffy last night, she said it was selfish and all kinds of things to keep it to ourselves, and that you must all hear about it; so if you don't find it interesting, pull out the Fluffy's feathers, not mine.

"Hildegarde Grahame--she is Hildegarde Merryweather now, but I cannot realise it yet--has been a very dear friend of ours for several years.

We think there is no one like her in the world; I'll show you a picture of her by and by. Well, a year ago she became engaged to my uncle."

"Your uncle!" cried the girls. "Why, I thought she was a girl!"

"So she is a girl, but Roger--well, he is my uncle, but he isn't so very much older than I am. That is--he is twenty-five, and Hildegarde is twenty; so you see it is just exactly right. There isn't anybody like him, either. He is as near an angel as a man can come and be alive; and he is tremendously clever, really eminent already in his profession, and we all love him to distraction."

"Is he handsome?" asked Viola Vincent.

"I don't know; yes, I think he is. Not a barber-shop beauty, though. He is tall, and very strong, broad-shouldered, with the kindest eyes in the world, and a smile that makes you crinkle all over with pleasure. Well, and so they were engaged, and now they are married; the wedding was on Wednesday, and this is Friday, and here I am. Now I'll begin at the very beginning of the day. Of course we woke up early, and looked out of the window; and it was all gray and cloudy. I thought it was going to rain, and I was in the depths, but Bell--you know Bell, my sister, at college--was sure it would clear before seven, and so it did. The sun came out bright and clear, and soon we saw that it was going to be the most beautiful day that ever was. We had been out in the fields all day before, getting flowers, and we had them all ready in tubs and bowls and pitchers; so after breakfast we could go right to work on the decorations. We did the church first. It is a pretty stone church, with a good deep chancel. We filled in the back of the chancel with great ferns--mostly evergreen ferns, so that they would not wilt--and palms and things; and then we made banks and banks of asters and goldenrod,--oh, it was lovely! Most of them came from the camp-pasture, Bertha; you remember how lovely it is in September."

Bertha nodded. "I should think I did!" she said. "Most beautiful place I ever saw, except the rest of it all."

"Well, I never saw it look more beautiful than that day before the wedding, when Bell and the boys and I rode out on our wheels, and came back by moonlight, with great bundles of purple and gold tied on our backs and nodding over our heads. But all the ferns and the asters and chrysanthemums and roses came mostly from Hildegarde's own garden at Braeside, and from Roseholme, Colonel Ferrers's place. We might have carpeted the church entirely with asters, if we had wanted to; as it was, we had great garlands of them twined over the chancel rail and swinging among the ferns and goldenrod; really, I never saw so many flowers at one time in my life. When that was all done we went to the house, Braeside, the Grahames' house, to see if we could help there; but Mrs. Flower, a friend of Hildegarde's, of whom we used to be the least little bit jealous before we knew her, was there, and another friend, Miss Desmond,--she was one of the bridesmaids,--and they had everything so beautifully arranged that there was nothing for us to do but stand and admire it with all our eyes. People in New York had sent down all kinds of splendid flowers, boxes and boxes of them, so that the house was a perfect bower, and smelt like the Vale of Cashmere; but we knew very well that Hilda would like our flowers best. Then--well, a lot more presents had come since the night before, so as there was time enough before dressing, we went in to see them. I don't suppose you care about the presents, girls!"

"Oh! oh! we do!" cried the girls, in chorus. "We want to hear about every single one, Snowy."

"My dears! it would take me all night, and then I couldn't remember them all. But I'll try and tell you some of them. Let me see! Colonel Ferrers gave her a set of sapphires; the most beautiful things you ever saw.

Necklace and pendant and pin, most wonderful dark blue stones, set in star-shape. And Jack Ferrers and his father gave her some wonderful Roman gold-work--I don't know how to describe it, I never saw anything like it--that Jack picked up in Europe. Then there was silver, heaps and heaps of it, from relatives in New York and I don't know where; some of it very handsome indeed, but I don't care so much about silver, do you?

I remember there were ten salt-cellars, no two alike. But the things we cared for were the small presents that came from people we knew; people who loved Hildegarde, not just because she was their grandniece or something, but because she was herself. Oh, some of them were funny, girls! There were two dear old people who had come a long way to the wedding, a Mr. and Mrs. Hartley, with whom Hilda spent a summer when she was about fifteen, and whom she has been fond of ever since. I should think she would be; the old lady has a face like Raphael's grandmother--I can't think of any other way of describing it; and Mr.

Hartley is simply a duck, the dearest funny old man you ever saw. Well, they brought Hilda the most beautiful toilet-set I ever saw or dreamed of,--something wonderful, all blue dragons and gilding. Papa said it was very rare; and Hilda cried when she saw it, and scolded them dreadfully for bringing it away from its own room; but still she was delighted to have it, and says she will never use any other. Then there was young Doctor Chirk,--funny name, isn't it?--Mrs. Flower's brother. Such a nice, bright, jolly fellow! Well, he was part of that same summer, it seems, and he carved a beautiful frame out of wood that grew in Hartley's Glen; and Mrs. Flower, who paints very well, had made a picture of the glen itself--lovely place!--for the frame, or I suppose the frame was made to fit the picture, no matter which; and _that_ filled her with joy.

"Then there were the people from Bywood. My dear, Miss Wealthy Bond is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen, except two. She is just like live Dresden china, smiling and dimpling; and the dear quaint maid who came with her, Martha, had made Hildegarde's whole winter provision of jellies and jams, because 'it wasn't likely Hildegarde would have time herself this first season, and it wasn't a thing you could trust to hired help in general.' Miss Bond herself had brought china--my dear!

did you ever see tortoise-sh.e.l.l crockery? Well, it is a most beautiful thing, and the art was lost a hundred years ago, and each piece is worth I don't know how much; but this dear old lady had a dozen plates, all hexagonal, too, and not a single point broken or chipped, and two pitchers,--well, I haven't the heart even to think of those pitchers, I wanted them so,--and they were all for Hilda, because Hilda had brought the sunshine back into her life, she told me.

"Girls, it was the same story everywhere. Mrs. Grahame being so delicate, and Hilda so busy, Bell and I were there a great deal the few days before the wedding, and we took the guests to walk and drive and so on. Everywhere it was the same story, the joy and brightness and love that this one girl had carried with her wherever she went. I never shall forget it--never.

"Then--let me see--what next? Oh! I had nearly forgotten the dear little boy, Benny, Miss Bond's adopted son. He considers Hilda his own private property, and he was furiously jealous of Roger and everybody else. When he first came it was quite sad, really, the child was so unhappy, and there was no consoling him. He wanted Hilda to sing to him and play with him just as she did when she was staying there at Bywood; and naturally she couldn't, poor dear, though it was wonderful how she managed to be with them all a little every day, and to see to almost everything, so that her mother should have no care or worry. Well, where was I? oh! the little boys. Hugh Allen, our Hugh,--I can't stop to tell you about Hugh now, but he is the dearest, queerest little fellow,--Hugh watched all this for awhile, and then he took Benny away with him, down into the garden, and they were gone a long time. And when they came back Benny marched straight up to Roger, and said, 'You are nice! you can have my girl,' and then marched off again, and went and cried, poor lamb, till Hugh comforted him.