'Hurrah! hurrah!' cried Bobby, clapping his hands in an ecstasy of admiration.
Peggy turned round with a radiant face.
'It's perfectly easy!' she exclaimed; 'I could do it over again. Now, Bobby, you come up and try!'
But here Lilian's pent-up excitement and wrath burst forth.
'For shame, Peggy!' she cried. 'If you want to break your own neck, you shan't break Bobby's, at any rate! Don't you know what a horribly dangerous thing you have been doing? And the idea of your walking along there with your boot-lace dangling down in that way! You are really getting too old for these silly tricks; one can't look after you like a baby. Aunt Helen would be angry if she heard of this!'
Peggy sat down on the bottom rung of the ladder. The triumph had faded from her face, and left something not nearly so pleasant to look at behind.
'All right,' she said defiantly; 'go along and tell Aunt Helen if you like! I don't care!'
'Peggy, how horrid you are! Do I ever tell? Didn't I wash and iron your pinafore yesterday, when you fell into the pig-trough, and nobody even suspected? I call you right-down mean to go saying things like that!' And Lilian's pretty face flushed quite pink with righteous indignation.
Peggy had the grace to look rather ashamed of herself.
'No, Lil, you're a dear; you don't tell tales,' she said; 'and I haven't forgotten about the pinafore.'