It was a cheerful view to be taken by a girl with a painful lump on her arm–still swelling–as Lucy was in a position to appreciate. Yet Peggy’s confidence was comforting, and Lucy helping to remove the remnants of the picnic feast, to a safe distance from the restless hornets, was conscious of an appreciable rise in spirits.
The remainder of the day justified Peggy’s optimism. Bess was captured at the further end of the pasture, where she was grazing placidly amid the stumps, with nothing in her demeanor to suggest her brief relapse into youthful agility. The girls picked flowers and ferns, explored the ravine and made friendly advances to a family of gray squirrels who chattered angrily at them from the boughs overhead, apparently under the impression that they were the owners of the wood which these noisy human creatures were invading. Then they drove home in the golden light of the sunset, and sang all the way. And Lucy Haines carried into her dreams a memory of cheery friendliness and wholesome fun which was a novelty in her staid and often sombre recollections.
Joe only grinned when Peggy announced herself as a candidate for the medal he had promised. It was not till a week later, when the print which chronicled old Bess’s display of spirit was exhibited, that he was convinced. He stood with mouth open, and eyes distended, incredulity slowly giving way to conviction.
“Well, it is old Bess, galloping off like a two-year-old. You must have fired off a cannon at her heels. Think of old Bess, legging it in that style! That there picture had ought to be framed.”
CHAPTER VII
THE COTTAGE BESIEGED
Peggy was in high spirits. Ever since her first meeting with Lucy Haines she had been haunted by a growing desire to find some practical way of showing her sympathy for the hard-working, ambitious girl. With Peggy the longing to be helpful was like hunger or thirst, a keen craving whose satisfaction brought a pleasure equally keen.
On the drive home after the picnic Peggy had questioned Lucy as to the price she received for her berries, and Lucy’s answer had caused her to open her eyes. “Why, that’s queer. We pay twice as much at home.”
“Yes, I know. It’s the same way with farmers’ stuff. The commission men get a big part of the profits,” Lucy explained.
“It doesn’t seem fair when you have to stand hours in the hot sun picking, and all they have to do is to set the boxes where folks will see them, and they sell like hot cakes. Wouldn’t it be nice–” Peggy stopped abruptly, and gave herself up to formulating a delightful, and as it seemed to her, a perfectly feasible plan, namely that a part of Lucy’s berries at least, should be shipped directly to Friendly Terrace, and sold at the market price, Lucy to receive the entire proceeds less the expense of transportation.