"Over back of that house." Estelle gestured with her treasures in the direction of a snug-looking farmhouse standing on a rise of land above the lake.
"Don't pick any more there, dear. I guess those flowers belong to the people who live in the house. But all the flowers in the woods, and growing around the meadows, belong to everybody." She made a grimace at the other girls, over the head of the unconscious Estelle. "I've got to go up to the farmhouse and explain matters."
"I'll go with you," said Elaine, jumping to her feet, and the two started up the long slope, Peggy sighing penitently. "It was all my fault. I was so anxious those children shouldn't think they were going to be arrested if they picked a dandelion, I guess I went a little too far the other way. Who would have thought that they would have stumbled on a garden first thing?"
The farmer's wife, being indoors, had not noticed the rifling of her garden, but so far from displaying annoyance over Peggy's explanations, she was manifestly interested. "I've heard tell," she replied, "that some of those city children set store by flowers to beat all. And she picked her hands full, did she? Didn't know the difference between wildflowers and garden stuff? Well, well!"
But when Peggy, producing a not over-full pocketbook, made tentative offers to pay for the damage Estelle had wrought, the good woman's protest waxed indignant.
"Now I'd like to know what you take me for? Pay for 'em? I'd be ashamed to look my husband in the face when he came in if I took your money." She went to the window and looked with interest down the long slope, to the slight figures moving with such joyous abandon. "All brothers and sisters, you say?"
"Yes, and there's two others not here, a sister who's about fourteen and the baby."
"And we haven't chick nor child," said the farmer's wife. The shadow that crossed her kindly face, as she stood watching the small flitting shapes, had not lifted when Peggy and Elaine said good-bye.
At the door Peggy had an idea, and halted. "There isn't any boat that we could get around here, is there? I'd like to take those children out on the water if I could."
The farmer's wife came to the door. "Why, we've got an old dug-out tied down under the willows. It leaks a little, but you'd have to load it with stone to sink it. We keep it there, 'cause it's handier if we want to go to Mr. Miller's, t'other side of the lake, to row across, than to go all the way 'round. 'Tain't so easy rowing as it might be, but you're welcome to it if you want it."