And then the collision happened.
“Oh, oh, oh,” gasped Peggy as she and Katherine rolled over each other, a whirling mélange of blue dress and red coat, down the steep slope of the river bank right into the midst of the waiting group of bacon batters.
Around them as they sat up, still seeing stars, and aching from the bumps newly raised on their foreheads to their scratched knees and ankles, arose a hubbub of questionings, consolations and reproaches.
“Oh, my—land!” moaned Peggy, winking the dust and bits of dried leaves out of her eyes. “I hope you don’t feel as badly as I do, Katherine. What made you say—” she spoke now in a puzzled tone, for full consciousness was coming back, “whatever made you say that you would—save me? Instead you nearly killed me, you know.”
“Why, I—ouch! my poor arm—I was going to save you from the ghosts and things at Gloomy House, of course,” answered Katherine indignantly. “You were gone so long and we were all so worried, that I climbed the top of the hill to see if I couldn’t make out what had become of you—and then there you were flying away from that awful place like mad, scared to pieces at something. Naturally, I hollered that I’d save you. What kind of a room-mate would I have been if I hadn’t?”
The tears suddenly started to Peggy’s eyes. She felt just at the moment, in spite of her bruises, all the beautiful thrill that is inspired by the discovery of absolute loyalty and affection in a room-mate. The autumn sunlight glinting down on Katherine’s yellow hair suddenly seemed to Peggy like a halo, and impulsively she reached toward her.
“It was fine of you, Katherine,” she said, “but I didn’t need saving—I was running because I was in a hurry to tell you people that the dinner is on. And Mr. Huntington doesn’t mind the grounds—I mean the grinds, but I’m so wounded I can’t talk straight,—and we’re to have it on Thanksgiving if Friend Forest will let us. Girls, he’s perfectly wonderful—”
“Oh, dear,” sighed Katherine, “and all that worry on my part for nothing.”
“And all your injuries for nothing, too,” sniggered Florence Thomas heartlessly. “You infants with your terribly impromptu manner of returning to our midst will be the death of me yet. Peggy, please draw a long, calm breath and then let us in on what really happened in Gloomy House.”
To an eager audience, then, Peggy told the whole outcome of her adventure, interrupting herself now and then to suggest, with some irrelevance certain dishes that would be particularly desirable as part of the dinner.