"The very first time that telephone rang it was somebody that wanted the butcher; and the second time, a girl, who was coming over to spend the afternoon with her, rang up to say her aunt was in town and she was going to the matinée instead. I don't think Mary ever felt the same about her phone after that start-out. When it rang, she looked kind of scared, as if she was afraid she was going to hear something disappointing."
"But surely," Peggy exclaimed, "she must have lots of calls from her friends. I—why, I know I haven't called very often, but that was because I was always hoping to get time to go over to see her." There was such genuine distress in her voice that Miss Potts was visibly melted.
"It's a busy world," she said, "for young folks and old folks, too, and I guess on the whole it's lucky it is so easy for us to forget. But all the same," she ended, with a shake of her head, "it's pretty hard on the ones who get forgotten."
The clerk brought out the prescription for which Miss Potts had been waiting, and Peggy rejoined her friends. For a moment she considered sending her flowers to Mary, but a fear that to Miss Potts this might seem an effort to evade a more exacting expression of sympathy led her to relinquish her purpose. Her crest-fallen manner revealed that something was wrong, and as they left the drug store her friends resentfully demanded an explanation.
"Peggy, what was that woman saying to you?" Priscilla was bristling like a mother hen who sees one of her brood attacked.
In a few words Peggy explained. Her three listeners exchanged conscience-stricken glances.
"It seems rather mean that you should be the one to be scolded," said Amy, "when you have gone to see Mary oftener than all the three of us together."
"That isn't saying much," Peggy stated gloomily. "I haven't been near her for months."
"But you haven't had time," cried Ruth, slipping her hand through her friend's arm.