"As long as you behave yourself, I don't see what difference it makes."
"I've thought a lot about going to the post office at night," Peggy said, "and I've argued a lot about it with Ruthie and Mother, and the conclusion that I've come to is that it's just as well to keep away. All the girls that aren't nice hang around there. Some of the girls that are nice stay away. When I grow up, my niceness is going to be so much a matter of course that I won't have to look out for it so hard. Just now I am going to obey Grandmummy's rule to 'avoid the appearance of evil'."
"I guess you are just about right, Peggy," Elizabeth said after reflection. "Sometimes you talk a lot like Jeanie. Would you like to hear some of her letter?"
"I should say I would, but don't read it to me unless you really want to."
"I do," Elizabeth said, "and the reason I do is that I think you are like Jean in some ways. You are both of you way beyond me in the way you look at things."
"The way I look at things is better than the way I act sometimes."
"I'm inclined to be just the other way around. The way I look at things is worse than the way I act most generally."
"I'm disobedient," Peggy said, "and sloppy weather, and always late to places. I do as I'm told about things like going to the post office at night, but not about trying to run the car or getting home on time."
"I'm just the other way," Elizabeth reflected. "I wouldn't monkey with anything I was told not to touch, but I'd make a big fuss, if only in my own mind, about obeying a grown-up rule that I didn't understand."
"Either way gets you into trouble at times," Peggy said, sagely. "Don't look round, but there are two boys trailing behind us."