Peggy Raymond's Vacation Part 21

"But listen, Aunt Peggy--"

"Dorothy, you're a naughty girl. I can't listen."

Dorothy too burst into sobs. "I just wanted to tell you," she wailed, "that Aunt Abigail was a-sitting on the porch."

Peggy spun about. The astonishing news was true. On the porch sat Aunt Abigail, swaying slightly in one of the willow rockers, with her meditative gaze fixed on the western sky. After the first inevitable half minutes of stupefaction, there was a wild rush for the house.

"It seems to me I never saw the sky prettier," was Aunt Abigail's astonishing beginning. But no one was in the mood to join her in discussing the beauties of nature. "Where have you been?" was the cry echoed from lip to lip.

Aunt Abigail smoothed a wrinkle in her skirt, and for the first time since undertaking the chaperonage of the Terrace girls, she looked a trifle discomfited.

"I found such an interesting story in the garret," she said, "a continued story it was, and it ran through an entire year, fifty-two numbers. I had a little difficulty in finding every instalment, but I succeeded at last. You girls will enjoy reading it. I am afraid--" Aunt Abigail glanced uneasily at the rosy west, and left the sentence unfinished. "I hope," she said instead, "that you didn't wait dinner for me."

"But the door was locked," said Peggy, finding it almost impossible to believe that their alarm had been groundless.

"Yes. I thought it wasn't quite safe to leave the door unlocked, when I would be in the third story, but I didn't want to have to hurry down to let you in. I locked the front door on the outside, and hung up the key.

Then I went in by the back door and locked it on the inside."

"And you mean that you've been in the garret all these hours?" cried Amy in accents of exasperation. Her face gave no hint of its usual easy-going good-nature. Though the tears were still undried upon her cheeks, ominous lightning played in her eyes. It really looked as if she could not easily forgive Aunt Abigail for her failure to be kidnapped by gypsies.

And just at the right moment somebody giggled. Among other benefits that laughter confers on the race, it not infrequently serves as a lightning conductor. With all the anxiety they had suffered, the situation was ludicrous nevertheless. While they had agonized below stairs, Aunt Abigail had sat on the garret floor, absorbed in a sensational serial story, oblivious to everything but the next chapter. An uncontrollable t.i.tter went the rounds. It gained volume, like a seaward flowing brook.

It swelled to a roar. And Amy, who for a moment had stood silent and disdainful, as if she defied the current to sweep her off her feet, gave up all at once, and laughed with the rest.

Aunt Abigail laughed too, though more as if she wished to appear companionable than because she really saw the joke. When the silence of exhaustion followed the uproar, and the girls were wiping their wet eyes and each avoiding the glances of her neighbor, for fear of going off into another paroxysm, Aunt Abigail made a remark which helped to explain her failure to enter into the fun.

"I really hope you didn't wait dinner," repeated Aunt Abigail politely.

"And if--if it's the same to the rest of you, I vote for an early supper."

CHAPTER XV

PRISCILLA'S LOOKING-GLa.s.s

"In less than twenty-four hours Elaine will be here."

"You've been saying that for a week," Priscilla commented tartly. The two girls had the porch to themselves, Priscilla stretched her lazy length in the hammock, while Peggy had curled herself into the biggest chair in a position which only a kitten or a school girl could by any possibility consider comfortable. Life at Dolittle Cottage was not favorable to _tete-a-tetes_, and Priscilla found ground for a grievance in the fact that on one of the rare occasions when they were alone together, Peggy should occupy the time in discussing the approaching visit of another friend. Though Priscilla had been making a gallant fight against her besetting weakness, it occasionally took her off her guard.

"If I've been saying that for a week," observed Peggy with unruffled good nature, "I've been talking nonsense. For this is the first day it's been true."

"Don't be silly, Peggy. You know perfectly well what I mean. For a week you haven't been able to talk of anything but Elaine's coming."

Peggy made no reply. There was a critical note in the accusation which she found vaguely irritating, and it seemed to her the wisest course to let the matter drop where it was. But Priscilla was in the unreasonable mood when even silence is sufficient ground for resentment.

"Dear me, Peggy, I didn't mean to reduce you to absolute dumbness. By all means talk of Elaine, if that's the only topic of interest."

"See here, Priscilla!" Peggy straightened herself, an unwonted color in her cheeks. For all her sweetness of disposition, she had a temper of her own, and was perhaps no less lovable on that account. "I thought we'd settled this thing long ago. You know I'm fond of Elaine," she went on steadily, "and after her hard year, I'm delighted that she can have an outing up here with the rest of us. It isn't anything I'm ashamed of, and it isn't anything you've a right to call me to account for. I don't care any the less for you because I care for Elaine, too."

There are few better tests of character than its response to frankness.

A girl of another sort would have found in this straightforward speech additional cause for umbrage. Priscilla showed that her faults were only superficial after all, by her immediate surrender.

"Oh, Peggy," she exclaimed, a choke in her voice. "You don't need to tell me that. I don't know what ails me sometimes. I should think you'd lose all patience with me."

A tear splashed down upon her cheek, and Peggy, surprised and touched, leaned forward to pat the heaving shoulder consolingly. "Never mind, dear. We won't say another word about it."

"Just one more," pleaded Priscilla. "You know, Peggy, that even when I'm hateful, I love you better than anybody in the world except my father and mother. But if you weren't the dearest girl on earth--"

The screen door flew open, and slammed shut with an explosive effect which might have startled listeners unused to such phenomena. But in a cottage filled with young folks, doors are so likely to slam that this miniature thunder-clap did not cause either head to turn. It was rather the singular silence following which led Peggy to lift her eyes, and it was the expression on Peggy's face which brought Priscilla to the realization that something out of the ordinary was taking place.

Claire stood by the screen door, her hands clenched, her face scarlet, her whole demeanor indicating the intensity of her struggle for self-control. Priscilla looked at her aghast, all sorts of alarming speculations racing through her mind. "Oh, what is the matter?" she cried.

"I heard every word."

"You heard--" Priscilla broke off, and turned on Peggy a blank face. "Do you know what she means? What has she heard?"

"Oh, you needn't try to get out of it," Claire's voice was suddenly shrill and rasping. "So Miss Peggy Raymond is the dearest girl on earth, is she, and you love her better than anybody in the world! It won't do any good for you to deny it."

"I haven't any intention of denying it," Priscilla replied, choosing her words with care. Instantly she knew that this meant the end of the friendship, which had by degrees become a burden rather than a joy.

Claire's exactions, her extravagant protests of an affection which in its expression proved itself to be nothing but self-love, had been the one discordant note in the summer's harmony. To have the unreal bond dissolved, even in so drastic a fashion, came as a relief. "I haven't any wish to deny it," Priscilla repeated, as Claire gasped hysterically.

"Everybody who knows me knows that Peggy's my best friend."

"And what about me?" The tragic tone of Claire's inquiry threw its absurdity into temporary eclipse. "I'm n.o.body, I suppose. I can just be set aside when it suits your pleasure. And you called yourself my friend."

"Why, Claire," Peggy began, throwing herself into the breach with her usual irresistible impulse toward peacemaking, but, to the angry girl, this well-meant interference was additional provocation. "Oh, don't you say anything," she cried, turning savagely on the would-be pacificator.

"You ought to be satisfied. It's all your fault."

"My fault!" The accusation was too preposterous to be taken seriously.

Peggy could not keep from smiling.

"Oh, yes, I don't wonder that you laugh," exclaimed Claire, finding in that involuntary twitching of the lips new fuel for her wrath. "It's what you've been plotting all the time, and now you've done it, so, of course, you're satisfied."

Peggy's impulse to laughter had pa.s.sed. She turned rather pale, and sat silent, not deigning to reply to such a charge, while Claire rushed on recklessly. "Of course, after this, nothing would induce me to stay in this house another night."

"I should hope not," remarked Priscilla with deadly coldness. She might have forgiven Claire's attack on herself, but such treatment of Peggy was not to be overlooked. The eyes of the two girls met like clashing swords.

But in spite of Claire's declaration that nothing would induce her to spend another night at Dolittle Cottage, when it was ascertained that the first train on which she could take her departure left at ten o'clock next morning, she did not seek the hospitality of Mrs. Snooks'

roof, nor even suggest sleeping on the lawn. After her first paroxysm of anger was over, she became abnormally and painfully polite, begged everybody's pardon for nothing at all, and proffered extravagant thanks for the simplest service. She declined to come down to supper on the pretext that she was too busy packing. And when Peggy carried up a well-laden tray, Claire received her with courteous protests.

"Oh, dear me! You shouldn't have done that. I had no idea of your taking any trouble on my account. I'm not at all hungry, you know." Claire would have given much for sufficient strength of will to refuse to taste another morsel of food in Dolittle Cottage, but being angry is, unluckily, no safeguard against being hungry.

As a matter of fact, the voice of Claire's appet.i.te was too insistent to allow her to give herself the satisfaction of haughtily declining to profit by Peggy's thoughtfulness. "Just set the tray down anywhere," she continued, packing ostentatiously, "and if I get time and feel like it, I'll eat a mouthful." And Peggy departed, relieved by her sincere conviction that no one in the cottage would go to bed without a satisfactory evening meal.

As Claire was to leave at ten, and Elaine arrived at eleven, it was but natural that the girls who were to meet the new arrival should accompany the departing guest on the four-mile drive to the station. Indeed, if they depended on the stage, it was necessary that they should go together, as this conveyance made but one trip a day in each direction.

Peggy did not wish to delegate to any of the other girls the responsibility of meeting Elaine, whom she regarded as her especial guest, and since Claire had come to the cottage on Priscilla's invitation, Peggy felt that it devolved on Priscilla to see her off, in spite of the unfortunate termination of the visit.

"As for seeing her off, I shall be glad enough to do that," declared Priscilla, who, now that her tongue was loosed, was atoning for many days of repression. "But, Peggy, I don't see how I can stand a four-mile drive with that girl."