["Luncheon was served shortly after their arrival"]
The Girls of Friendly Terrace
CHAPTER I
THE RETURN OF PEGGY
The naming of the Terrace was a happy accident. It must have been an accident, for Jenkins Avenue crossed it at right angles, and just to the north ran Sixtieth Street. No one could have guessed when the Terrace was laid out that the name would prove so appropriate, and that the comfortable cottages would have such a cordial, neighborly look, as if nodding greetings to one another across their neat strips of lawn. When the name Friendly Terrace appeared on the street lamps at the corner there were no smiling faces visible at the front windows of the houses, no plump babies rolling over the lawns, no girls gathering on one another's porches, like robins in the boughs of a cherry tree, or strolling along the sidewalk, two by two, with their arms about each other's waists. The naming of the Terrace must have been a happy accident, or else an inspiration.
There was usually a girl in evidence on Friendly Terrace at any hour of the day, and this morning there were three of them. They ranged from tall Priscilla, who was five feet seven, and mortally afraid of growing taller, down to Amy, who was almost as broad as she was long, and who was in a chronic state of announcing her determination to leave off eating candy next week. Ruth, who on this occasion served as the connecting link between the two extremes, was a slender girl, whose alert air told plainly that she was on the watch for something or somebody.
"Once when my Aunt Fanny was coming to make us a visit," Amy observed reminiscently, "her train was six hours late. Just think if Peggy's train--"
"Don't!" exclaimed Priscilla rather fretfully, and Ruth said with decision, "O Peggy's train couldn't be late, she's coming such a tiny bit of a way."
"It might be if there was a wreck," Amy insisted triumphantly. "That was the matter when Aunt Fanny came. A freight train was wrecked just ahead of them, and they had to stand on the track for hours and hours. We waited luncheon for her till I was almost starved."