“A little better, but you don’t seem to make any two stitches quite the same length.”
Peggy suddenly flung down her work. “There’s somebody at the back door,” she said.
“It’s the grocer’s boy. You can go and get the things, only be sure not to let the cat out.”
Peggy never quite knew how it happened. She did not mean to disobey her mother, but the afternoon was very pleasant and the kitchen was hot. It seemed cruel to keep a cat in the house. She held the door open and, while she was debating whether it would not be possible for her and the cat to take a walk together, Lady Jane slipped out. Something gray and fluffy seemed to fly along the grass and disappear under the fence. She had gone without waiting for their pleasant walk together. Instead they would have a mad race. Peggy liked the idea of a chase. It was much more exciting than overcasting seams.
Peggy and the pussy-cat had a wild race, and more than one person looked back to see why Peggy Owen, with flying yellow hair, was running at such speed cross-lots, through back yards, and climbing over fences. Suddenly Peggy was caught, as she was scrambling over a fence, by a piece of barbed wire. Her one remaining winter school frock was torn past mending. “Oh, dear, what will mother say?” said Peggy.
The skirt was almost torn from the waist, and Peggy felt like a beggar-maid as she crept home. “Only, everybody will know I am not a beggar-maid,” thought Peggy. “They’ll all say, ‘What mischief has Peggy Owen been up to now?’”
And her mother did say something very much like it when she came in. “Peggy, what have you been doing now?” she asked.
“I was hunting for Lady Jane,” she said breathlessly. “She slipped out of the kitchen door.”
“Peggy, how could you be so careless?” said her mother. Then, as she noticed the confusion on Peggy’s face, she said, “Did you let her out?”
“Not exactly,” said Peggy. “I was thinking perhaps it would be nice for us to have a walk together, when she ran away.”