"A pedler!" Priscilla repeated disdainfully. "She must be very observing. Well, Peggy. After you explained--"
"That seemed to make it all the worse," admitted Peggy, finding a little relief, it must be acknowledged, in the sympathy called out by her confession. "She can't have been used to neighbors, that's sure. She said they weren't objects of charity, and shut the door in my face."
An indignant explosion followed, when everybody talked at once. Then Dorothy bobbing up as expectedly as a Jack in a box, poured oil on the troubled waters by offering a suggestion. "Maybe they fought the currants was flies. I did till I bited 'em."
"O, Dorothy, what a killing child you are!" cried Amy, giving way to helpless laughter, and this time she had plenty of company. Peggy was the only one of the quartet who made any effort to conceal her merriment, Peggy having a singular theory that children should be treated just as courteously as older people. She looked regretfully at the small, erect figure marching out of the room with an air of stately displeasure. "O dear!" she sighed. "I'm afraid we've hurt her feelings. Dorothy does hate to be laughed at."
"Then she'd better give up making such speeches," remarked Amy, wiping her eyes. "But to go back to Peggy's new friend--Elaine--"
"Yes, just to think of her slamming the door in Peggy's face," cried Ruth, whose customary gentleness had quite disappeared in resentment over Peggy's snubbing. "If she doesn't want neighbors she needn't have any. I move that we let her alone, just as much as if she lived down town somewhere."
"We didn't tell you, Peggy," Priscilla exclaimed, taking up the tale. "But we found out the sort of girl she was the day you came. We thought it was your hack, you know, and we rushed to grab you the minute you stepped out, and we were all screaming for you to hurry, and when this girl got out we felt cheap enough to go right through the sidewalk."
"Yes, we did," interrupted Amy. "If there had been an open coal-hole handy it would have taken me about five seconds to disappear."
"The way she took it showed the sort of girl she is," insisted Priscilla. "Instead of smiling, or saying that it didn't matter, she acted as if we'd been so many hitching-posts standing in a row. Didn't see us or hear us, either. I knew in a minute that I'd never have any use for her if she lived here a thousand years."
"That's just the way I feel," said Ruth.