As Peggy had promised, the bell of Mary's telephone worked over-time. The Friendly Terrace girls were supplemented by former school-mates in sufficient numbers to keep up the excitement till half past eight that evening. Most of the girls, whose memories Peggy had undertaken to jolt, were conscience-stricken when they realized how they had neglected Mary. And they readily fell in with Peggy's suggestion.
"Even if we can't get over there very often," urged Peggy, "we can use the telephone. Five minutes talk every few days will make Mary feel that she's in touch with us still. It doesn't seem to me I could bear feeling forgotten." Peggy did not realize that, even with Mary's disability, she would have made herself the center of some circle; and in her failure to understand that Mary's rather colorless personality was in part responsible for what had happened, Peggy was the more severe upon herself for what now seemed to her inexplicable and inexcusable neglect.
Thanks to the sudden activity of Peggy's conscience, Mary Donaldson heard more outside news in one day than she had heard in the three months previous. And as the trouble with most young people is want of thought, rather than want of heart, few of the girls were satisfied with chatting five or ten minutes over the telephone. They promised to come to see her soon. They offered to lend her books or mail her magazines. One girl suggested that she would bring over some of her victrola records for Mary to hear, and another informed her that as soon as the lilies of the valley were out she should have a cluster. All at once Mary Donaldson's friends were remembering her in earnest.
When Marian O'Neil rang off at twenty minutes of nine, Mary hesitated a moment and then called Peggy Raymond. And Peggy who was giving her studies that half-hearted attention customary on the first day after vacation, whether the student is in the primary grade or a college Junior, came running downstairs when Dick shouted her name.
"Hello—Hello—Why, Mary!" The pleasure in her tone was unmistakable, and the shut-in, two miles away, thrilled responsively.
"Peggy, I just wanted to tell you before I went to sleep that I've had such a lovely day."
"Have you, dear? I'm glad. What happened?"
The question took the guileless Mary aback. "I thought perhaps you knew something about it. My telephone has been ringing all day. It was queer if it was only a coincidence, for some girls called me up that I haven't heard from for years."
"Must have been what they call a brain wave," suggested Peggy, audaciously.