"What is it?" she cried wildly, as Peggy, at the other end of the porch, turned upon her a startled countenance, "O, what is it?"
"What's what?" Peggy flew to answer her own question. At the sight which had alarmed Amy she stood as if petrified, her lips apart, and broken fragments of sentences escaping at intervals.
Meanwhile the slow-moving figure had reached the door. From beneath the mysterious drapery came the sound of a stifled wail. Peggy came to herself with a start.
"Dorothy!" she cried. "What have you got over yourself?" She touched the drapery with shrinking fingers. It was sticky, clinging. The fragment she touched fell off at her feet.
"I smell--yeast," exclaimed Peggy sniffing. "Yeast!" She looked about her wildly. "Girls, it's bread-sponge."
"She'll smother," exclaimed the practical Priscilla, and forthwith clawed an opening in the sticky mass, through which Dorothy's face looked out. It was a solemn face at that moment. A suspicious trembling of the lips told that the tears were not far away.
"I--I don't like Sally," faltered Dorothy. "She put somefing in a pan, up high. And when I pulled, it covered me all up."
"That's the end of the picnic, girls." Peggy spoke with forced calm. "The end, as far as I'm concerned. Bread-sponge all the way from here to the kitchen. Bread-sponge in her hair and her eyebrows."
"I don't care, Aunt Peggy," cried poor little Dorothy. "I'd just as soon go to the picnic all sticky."
It was a melancholy ending for so many cheerful plans. The girls protested that the picnic without Peggy would only be an aggravation. They suggested putting it off till another day. But Peggy, usually distinguished for her sweet reasonableness, was not in a mood to make the best of things.