"Yes, father. Or at least I was almost there. You know there's a cross-road just beyond the gate, and a Ford car came up that cross-road and turned north on the pike. And the woman stopped it—"
"Confederates, I'll bet," cried Dick.
"No, it looked as if she were just asking some stranger for a ride. And as far as they knew she was only a tired woman carrying a bag and they took her in. And then I saw it wasn't any use to go further."
"You surprise me." Mr. Raymond's voice was satirical. "I can't understand why you didn't run after the machine."
Peggy accepted the sarcastic rejoinder meekly. "Then I turned around and came home. But you see I had put on my new brown shoes because Mrs. Morley wanted to fit my brown dress with the shoes I was going to wear with it, and all at once they began to hurt me terribly. Instead of hurrying I had to slow up, and sometimes I had to stop and wait. I never had anything hurt so."
"If you'd walked three blocks east," exclaimed Graham, speaking for the first time, "you could have got a car."
"I knew it, but I'd come off without my pocket book. I didn't have a penny with me. That was the reason I didn't telephone."
Peggy looked about her with a crestfallen air. While she was far from realizing the extent of the alarm her family had felt, and would not have believed Graham had he told her of the apprehensions that had tortured him through the terrible time of waiting, she understood that they had all been worried and that she had inconvenienced every one by making dinner late. "Don't wait for me any longer," she pleaded. "Have the dinner put on, mother, and I'll be down as soon as I've washed up a little."
Mrs. Raymond put her arm about her. "Yes, come upstairs, darling. You must have something on those blisters right away. Alice, tell Sally to put on plates for Ruth and Graham."