Peggy in Her Blue Frock

by Eliza Orne White

“I’ll risk Peggy’s neck,” said her mother, as Peggy once more skipped up the stepladder.

This time she put the books down more carefully.

The family were moving from the large, old-fashioned house where the children had been born to a very small one, more than a mile farther from the village. Peggy and Alice were greatly interested in the moving. Their father’s mother had come all the way from New York to help about it.

Their father had been a country doctor with a large practice and he had gone into the war to save the lives of others; but the hospital where he was at work had been shelled, and he had lost his own life. This had happened almost at the end of the war. It seemed to the children a long time since the war was over, and a very long time since their father had gone overseas.

Peggy and Alice had been very much overcome when they heard of their father’s death, but now the world was very pleasant again. Another doctor was coming to town, to move into their roomy old house and take the practice which had been their father’s.

Peggy looked out of the window at the garden. It looked its worst on this March day, for it was all patches of white and brown. There was not enough of the white snow for winter sports, nor was the brown earth ready for planting seeds. Peggy was glad there were children in the doctor’s family because they would be sure to enjoy the croquet ground and the apple trees. How she should miss the apple trees! There was only one apple tree where they were going, but there was a cherry tree. Peggy’s face brightened when she thought of the cherry tree. And they were to have a garden full of vegetables.

“Mary,” said the children’s grandmother to their mother, “I’ll give you a year to try your experiment; and remember, if you don’t succeed, my offer holds good. I’ll always have a room in my small apartment for one of the children; and Peggy is old enough to get a great deal of good from a New York school.”

Peggy looked as if nothing would induce her to leave her mother. Not that she disliked her grandmother. Peggy liked people of all ages. She did not like old ladies so well as people of her mother’s age, because the younger ones were so much more active; and she liked children better still, for the same reason; and boys even better than girls, because they never expected you to play dolls with them. Peggy did not care for dolls as Alice did. When the world was so full of live things that scampered and frisked, or flew or crawled, why tie one’s self down to make-believe people that could neither speak nor move? Pussy was much more interesting than any doll.

Peggy looked at the furniture, standing forlornly about in strange places. Her own mahogany bureau was downstairs. “It looks for all the world,” said Peggy, “like a cat in a strange garret.” She had read this phrase in a book the day before, and it took her fancy. And then she wondered how their own cat would feel in her new home. And there was not any garret in the tiny house where they were going.

The cat walked in just then, but seeing the confusion she fled upstairs. She was a gray pussy, with darker gray stripes, and a pronounced purr that was almost as cozy as the sound of a tea-kettle. She had a pleasant habit of having young families of kittens, two or three times a year. The only drawback was, the kittens had to be given away just as they got to the most interesting age. There were no kittens now, only pussy, whose whole name was Lady Jane Grey.