"Daddy Neil brought them to us," answered Peggy, as she stepped toward the door to take an armful of pictures and pillows from old Jess who had followed his young mistress to Washington to care for Shashai and Silver Star, the horses having been sent on also, for Columbia Heights School had large stables for the accommodation of riding or driving horses for the use of its pupils, or they could bring their own if they preferred. So Shashai and Silver Star had been ridden down by Jess, taking the journey in short, easy stages, and arriving the previous evening. Tzaritza, to her astonishment had not been allowed to accompany them, and Roy was inconsolable for days. Peggy's departure from Severndale had left many a grieving heart behind.
"What I gwine do wid all dis hyer truck, Missie-honey?" asked Jess, coming in from the corridor with a second armful: riding-crops, silver bits, a fox's brush, books and what not.
"Just plump it down anywhere, Jess. We'll get round to it all in due time," laughed Peggy from her perch upon a small step-ladder where she was fastening up some hat-bands of the Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Olympia and the ships which had comprised the summer practice squadron, the girls all gathered about her asking forty questions to the minute and wild with curiosity and excitement. Never before had two "really, truly Navy girls" been inmates of Columbia Heights and it sent a wild flutter through many hearts. What possibilities might lie at the Annapolis end of the W. B. & A. Railroad!
Jess's white woolly head was bent down over the armful of books he was placing upon the floor; Peggy had returned to her decorating; Polly had draped her flag upon the wall and was standing her beloved bugle and a long row of photographs upon book-shelves beneath it, several girls following her with little squeals of rapture, when a pandemonium of shrieks and screams arose down the corridor and the next second a huge creature bounded into the room, tipping Jess and his burden heels over head, and flinging itself upon Peggy. Down came ladder, Peggy, and the white mass in a heap, the girls scattering in a shrieking panic to whatever shelter seemed to offer, confident that nothing less than a wolf had invaded the fold.
But Tzaritza was no wolf even if her beautiful snowy coat was mud-bedraggled and stuck full of burrs, nor was Peggy being "devoured alive," as Lily Pearl, who had actually run for once in her life, was hysterically sobbing into Mrs. Vincent's arms.
No, Peggy, rather promiscuous as to ladder, hammer, hat-bands and general paraphernalia, was lying flat upon her back, her arms around Tzaritza, half-sobbing, half-laughing her joy into the beautiful creature's silky neck, while Tzaritza whimpered and whined for joy and licked and dabbed her mistress with a moist tongue.
"It is a wolf! A wolf!" shrieked Lily Pearl, who had returned to the scene, "and he is killing her."
"It is a horrid, dirty dog! Why doesn't that man drive him out?" demanded Miss Sturgis, who had followed Tzaritza hot foot, having been in the main hall when the great hound went tearing through and up the stairs, nose and ears having given her the clue to her mistress' whereabouts.
"No, it's only a wolfhound!" laughed Polly, dropping her pictures to fly across the room and fall upon Tzaritza.
Then explanations followed. Tzaritza had been left in Shelby's care, but finding it impossible to restrain her when Jess was about to leave with the horses, he had tied her in the barn. The rope was bitten through as clean as a thread and Tzaritza's coat told of the long journey on the horses' trail.