From the third floor came a scrambling noise, then the sound of light feet tapping on the stairs.
“Well, you really did come, you children,” gasped the owner of the room, coming in flushed from her hasty descent and blowing a wavy strand of golden hair from her face.
She plumped down between them on the couch and looked from one to the other with an air of delighted proprietorship.
“And you’re beginning just right, too, as I knew you would. Thirteen is the open road to glory, here, and you certainly were courageous, handing in a poem first thing.”
Her hand reached for Peggy’s knee. “How do you like everything, now you’re here, and why haven’t you been over before?”
“We didn’t think you’d remember us,” said Peggy.
“There was so much water that day you saw us, at the picnic last year——”
Ditto threw back her head and laughed. “Yes, there was plenty of that,” she agreed. “I never saw anything so moist as you were. And you—Katherine Foster—yes, I remember your names, too,—I chose you for a friend of mine that day. And I’m positively insulted that neither of you accepted my invitation to come to see me, until I dragged you here on business. Your poem, Peggy,—here it is, I kept it out for you——”
She had risen and lifted the blue-folded paper from a pile of thick stories and “heavies” on the table. And Peggy, watching the nonchalant way she handled the sacred Monthly material, felt her admiration increasing.
“Now,” said Ditto, bending over the page with complete concentration, “let’s see just what we want to do—I thought that possibly——”