“Oh, yes. And she was very much interested in everything about us, and asked all kinds of questions. But she came especially to borrow the frying-pan. Can you get along without it, Peggy?”
“Why, if you can’t have what you want, you can always make something else do,” returned Peggy, unconsciously formulating one of the axioms in her philosophy of life. “But a frying-pan seems such a strange thing to borrow, Priscilla. She must have one of her own, and it’s not a thing one’s likely to mislay. However,” she added hastily, as if fearful of seeming to blame the over-generous lender, “we’ll get along. Well just forget that we ever had a frying-pan, and that it was borrowed.”
But, as Peggy was soon to learn, it was not going to be an easy matter to forget Mrs. Snooks.
CHAPTER IV
A STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY
From the very start the big brick fireplace in the living-room had held an irresistible fascination for the Terrace girls, accustomed as they were to the unromantic register. And when five days of their outing had passed and no fire had been kindled on the blackened hearth, Priscilla thought they were missing golden opportunities, and said so.
“The last of June isn’t the best time in the year for open fires,” suggested Peggy. “But I do think that to-night seems a little cooler. Perhaps we might have a fire and not swelter.”
“We could roast apples, couldn’t we?” Amy cried. “And chestnuts. Only there aren’t any chestnuts.”
“And just a few very wormy apples,” added Ruth. “But we can tell stories, and sit around in a circle, and not have any light in the room, except the light of the fire.”
The prospect was so alluring that supper was dispatched in haste, and one or two of the girls went so far as to suggest letting the dishes wait over till the next day. But as Peggy expressed horror at this unhousewifely proceeding, and Amy called attention to the fact that left-over dishes are doubly hard to wash, the motion failed to carry. Five pairs of busy hands made short work of the necessary task, and when the dishes were out of the way, and Peggy was conducting Dorothy up-stairs to bed, the others made a rush to the woodshed and filled their gingham aprons with pine knots and shavings.