"Of course," cried Peggy. "People are almost always better than you think. The things that seem horrid can generally be explained."
"And isn't it funny!" Elaine found in a burst of laughter the relief that might as easily have come through tears. "All this wouldn't have happened, if it hadn't been for those blessed Dunns."
Peggy jumped, as if the name had touched a nerve. "O, I've just been aching to tell you that Isabel was going to stay."
"To stay?"
"Jimmy came over and told me just before supper. That farmer's wife came in bright and early this morning. She wanted to keep Isabel, and Jimmy said his mother was willing, because it would be one less to take care of. There's a sad side to it," Peggy concluded, her bright face falling, "to think that the mother of any child would give her up as easy as that, but I can't help being glad that little Isabel will grow up with grass and flowers around her, and plenty to eat, and all the rest of the things they don't have on Glen Echo Avenue."
Elaine had risen to go. "I feel like staying and talking all night but I must get to bed and be ready for my work to-morrow. Yes, indeed. I'm awfully glad about little Isabel. It seems as if everything was turning out right for everybody."
"It's a pretty good world after all," smiled Peggy, voicing a favorite theory.
The words rang in Elaine's ears as again she sped across the dewy clover under the spangled sky. "Of course," she told herself. "How could it help being a good world as long as it has such people as Peggy Raymond in it?"
THE END.