“I’m going to sneak down just as I am and get mine,” breathed Peggy, “and then shall I read it to you, girls?”
Faults, depression, lost faith—all forgotten in the frank joy that was Peggy’s.
She pattered across the floor, begged prettily for the key, took it from Hazel Pilcher’s reluctant hand, and fitted it in the lock.
A moment later they heard her trailing down the hall.
There was complete silence while she was gone.
The outraged feelings were subsiding, and the girls, who a few moments before were almost hating each other, now waited in pleasant anticipation the reading of the poem.
There was no warning of her return. They were simply watching the door, which she had left open, and all of a sudden she stood framed in it, the soft candle glow lighting her lovely face and blue-clad figure, and the tan cover of the Monthly which she held clasped to her heart.
“I—can’t come back in,” she whispered. “I met our house-mother on the stairs, and she made me promise to go right to my own room if she’d let me creep down and get the Monthly from the table. It’s after ten, and all the lights are out down the hall. Good-night, girls; I’ve had a lovely time,” and she really believed she had.
Katherine followed her, with a backward wave of the hand, and what more fault finding went on after their departure they never knew.
“I s’pose it isn’t much to any one else,” said Peggy deprecatingly, “but I just feel as if this was the nicest number of the Monthly ever gotten out!”