Katherine looked helplessly after the retreating Peggy, and then down at the assorted pair of stockings left for her. “There seems to be nothing to do but put them on,” she sighed resignedly. In a few minutes she emerged from the shadows with as much dignity as she could assume.
And there down the road was Peggy, the full blaze of the autumn sun on her golden head, her eager face uplifted and aglow, and towering above her two good-looking young men, apparently oblivious to everything except this strange and vivacious little apparition that had burst so suddenly upon them.
One, Katherine recognized at once as Jim Huntington Smith, the grandson of old Mr. Huntington, whom they had known last year at Andrews, and through whose generosity Peggy had been enabled to come to college.
The two girls had been the means of discovering Jim’s relationship to the owner of “Gloomy House,” as the old Huntington place was known, and of re-uniting these two members of the same family.
So they regarded Jim as very much their property; as they might look upon some handsome older cousin.
Peggy was waving an arm back towards the pond, and the boys were laughing. Then as she went on with her gesticulations they looked up and saw Katherine.
Katherine had been shrinking back against the trees that lined the water, very conscious of the one tan stocking and the other grey one. She was trying to make up her mind whether to go forward and divert Peggy some way so that she would let these boys go, and would come back and change stockings, or whether she should go back and hide, and run the risk of having the whole joyous trio down the road charge upon her unexpectedly.
It was all settled for her now.
Jim swung his cap in the air and started toward her, while Peggy and the other young man followed more slowly. And even at such a time Katherine couldn’t help noticing the funny little way Peggy’s eye-lashes kept sweeping down and up again, and how pretty and pink her face was.
“Oh,” smiled Katherine to herself, “if she should suddenly wake up and notice her own feet.”