“That’s just the point,” snapped Mrs. Forest, “you have been treated with too great lenience. If you had thought more of getting home on time you wouldn’t have stopped for the hot chocolate. At least that part wasn’t necessary.”
“Oh, but it rather was,” Peggy began, but looking at Mrs. Forest she wondered how she could be expected to understand. Could she ever have been a girl on snow-shoes, and have known the cold that gleamed in the frosty air and the hunger that comes after great exertion? No, what was the use of looking for understanding there? Peggy lightly tapped the floor with her foot.
“You may go,” Mrs. Forest graciously permitted at this point, “I’m sorry, Miss Parsons,” she so far unbent as to say at parting, “that you thought you were lost and had a fright, but discipline above all things—discipline, my dear. Perhaps after this we shan’t have to combat your continual tardiness.”
In their own room a while later Peggy threw her arms around her room-mate’s neck and danced her this way and that, in a manner quite out of keeping with the tiredness that she felt.
“The greatest adventures, Katherinekins,” she shouted. “Oh, listen, listen, I can hardly wait to tell you.”
On releasing her friend, she proceeded to prepare for bed, saying she was too exhausted to sit up another minute. But she talked as she slipped on her kimono and folded back the couch cover from the cot bed on her side of the room.
“And, Katherine,” she came to the wonderful part at last, “who do you suppose he was? One of the people we tried to kill with our rose-tree—yes, he had our rose—”
“Rose-tree?” cried Katherine, and then her face, growing whiter and whiter in its excitement, she clasped her hands together and screamed out: “The fortune teller, the fortune teller! She spoke of that—quick, Peggy, hurry, what’s his name—is one of his initials H? Peggy, don’t keep me in suspense a minute longer—what is his name?”
Peggy was sitting up in bed with a queer expression in her face. As Katherine finished she looked across at her with a blank expression.
“Why, I don’t know his name!” she cried.