“It will be better than the train,” said Clara, “but it’s a long ride, and I always get awfully tired.”
“Do you?” said Peggy, swinging back and forth again.
“How long your legs are,” said Clara.
Peggy stopped short in her swinging. “If you say anything about my legs I shall go crazy,” she announced. Then she climbed as high in the apple tree as she could get and dared them to come and join her. “Come up into my house, you short-legged people,” she called down. “I have a room in a tower and there are windows in it, and I can see all over the place. Come up here—why don’t you come?”
“Don’t be cross, Peggy,” said Alice. “You know I am scared to, and Clara would spoil her dress if she climbed up there.”
“What are dresses for if you can’t climb trees in them?” Peggy called down.
“I wish I had a frock like yours, it is such a pretty color,” said Clara, who always liked other people’s things better than her own.
The compliment to her dress restored Peggy’s good humor. She was very seldom cross, and she felt thoroughly ashamed of herself. So she condescended to play dolls with Clara and Alice, and there was no fun so great as to have Peggy play dolls. She put them through such adventures and made them have such narrow escapes that the little mothers were positively thrilled. So it was a very happy afternoon for every one, even for Miss Rand, who came out just before it was time for the children to go home, with a tray on which there was a pitcher of something nice and cold that tasted of orange, and some small doughnuts. Miss Rand sat down on an apple branch, which seat she preferred to a chair, and she sang for them, at Peggy’s request, some Scotch songs, in a sweet contralto voice.
“It has been a nice afternoon,” said Peggy, as she kissed Clara good-bye, and this time Clara gave her a most responsive kiss.