THE CANARY-BIRD
Peggy and Alice had a very happy time the next few days playing with Clara. Their school had a vacation, too, so the children were able to spend long hours together, sometimes at one house and sometimes at the other. They liked better going to see Clara on account of the tree-house; and Clara liked better going to see them. She liked to come early and help to make the beds and do the dishes, for she was never allowed to help about the work at her own house, even now, when they were supposed to be camping out. The field behind the Owens’ house, where the garden was to be, was a delightful place to play, and so was the little hill beyond.
The time passed only too quickly, and, at the end of the vacation, Clara was whisked back to New York with her father and mother and Miss Rand, this time in an automobile. The children missed her very much at first; and June, when she would be coming back again, seemed a long way off.
But they soon got interested in the children at school. Peggy liked school, and she was very fond of her teacher. On the way to school they passed Mrs. Butler’s house. Peggy was always eager to stop and listen to the canary and have a little talk with Mrs. Butler, but Alice was always eager to go on for fear they would be late.
Sometimes they saw Mrs. Butler’s daughter Flora, starting off for her work. She was in a milliner’s store and wore the prettiest hats. Every time Peggy went by the milliner’s window, she stopped to look at the hats. She had longed to have a new one for Easter, for her old brown straw looked so shabby. One day, when she was with her mother and Alice, she made them cross the street to look at a hat in the window that she wanted very much. It was a peanut straw with a ribbon of the same color around it, with long ends. The ribbon had a blue edge, just the color of Peggy’s blue frocks.
“It does seem as if I’d got to have it,” said Peggy. “Why should there be a hat with blue on it, just the color of my dresses, if it wasn’t for me?”
“I wish I could get it for you, Peggy,” said her mother. “When my ship comes in perhaps I will.”
“When will it come in, mother?” Alice asked.
“I have not even got a ship—that’s the worst of it. However, as we don’t live at the seashore a garden is more useful. If we make the garden pay perhaps we can all have new hats.”
“But they’ll be winter hats if we wait for the garden, and I want the peanut straw,” said Peggy.