"I can't do that," Ruth returned despairingly. Resentfully she studied the address on the letter she held. "Christmas is just spoiled for me, Peggy. I can't think of anything but Maud, and the way Graham is wasting his money, and how deceitful he is, and how poor father would feel if he knew." She swallowed down a sob, and almost remorsefully, Peggy threw her arms about her and hugged her.
"You poor dear thing. I only wish I could help you. But, honestly, Ruth, there is only one way out, and that's to be frank and above board. Even if Graham has done wrong, silly things, it's no sign that he can't be brought to reason. I'd talk to him in a minute, if he were my brother."
Unwelcome advice seldom seems good advice to the recipient. Ruth went away dejected, with the purloined letter in her pocket, but Peggy's remonstrances had at least one good effect. Ruth resolved that in the future she would read no more of her brother's letters without his permission. Peggy, standing in the hall, her forehead knotted over her friend's problem, felt a little twinge of shame as she recalled her varying moods of dejection and irritation during the past week. The finishing of a specified number of gifts at a specified time seemed a trifling cause for disquiet, compared with the burden poor Ruth was carrying.
"Aunt Peggy!" A timid voice spoke from the doorway. "See what I've found."
Peggy whirled about. Dorothy stood on the threshold, the doll's petticoat slipped over her arm. She was studying it speculatively.
"It looks some like a sleeve, Aunt Peggy. A sleeve to a little girl's dress."
Peggy stifled the irritable exclamation which rose to her lips with such unwonted readiness, pulled the petticoat from Dorothy's arm and set it upon her curls. "It looks to me now like a cap," she said cheerily. "A real little dunce cap. Look in the glass and see."
Dorothy gazed at her reflection in the mirror, and agreed rapturously. "It looks 'zactly like a dunce cap, Aunt Peggy, and then I'd be the little dunce, wouldn't I? Or might it be--" she made the suggestion diffidently. "It might be a little teenty petticoat, but I guess it isn't 'cause then there'd have to be a dolly to go with it. And, anyway, I'm not going to pry, 'cause Christmas is coming."
Peggy laughed. After all it was better to have Dorothy suspect, than to have her weeping as if her heart were broken and wanting Christmas over. She sat down to her bureau scarf with less of the air of a sweat-shop worker, than had characterized her earlier in the day, and as her needle flew, and she abstractedly answered Dorothy's comments, her thoughts hovered about Ruth, poor Ruth, whose Christmas was spoiled through no fault of her own, whose joy was poisoned by the bitterest of all disillusions, disappointment in one she had loved and trusted.
CHAPTER XII