Graham took them home, telling Peggy good-naturedly that she wasn't fit to be trusted, and Peggy was too thankful to be taken care of, to resent the implication. The car was crowded, and Peggy was glad of the opportunity this gave her to hold Dorothy on her lap, and indulge in surreptitious hugs. Graham sat across the aisle and laughed at them both with the vast superiority of a collegian.
"He was a nice Santa Claus, Aunt Peggy," was Dorothy's only defence when reproached for her abrupt departure. "I asked him for lots of things, a dolly, and another dolly and a naughty-mobeel and a gold watch and a new house and a picture book. O dear! Aunt Peggy, I wish I'd told him another dolly beside."
Graham left his charges at Peggy's door as the early winter dusk was veiling the sky. He was half across the street when Peggy called after him:
"Graham! O, Graham! Please tell Ruth to come over here as quick as she possibly can."
"All right," Graham responded and smiled to himself. Peggy wanted to tell Ruth all about Dorothy's disappearance, of course, and her rescue, as if it were an affair of thrilling moment. "Knew she'd turn up, all right," thought Graham, puffing out his chest, and congratulating himself on being superior to the weakness of girls, even the best of them.
He little guessed the real importance of the news Peggy had to tell, or the difference it was to make in his sister's Christmas. When Ruth came back presently, moist around her lashes, and stooped to kiss him, as he sat poring over the evening paper, he was far from suspecting that in that kiss there was penitence, as well as the love of which he was so sure.
Dorothy had been asleep an hour when Mrs. Raymond bethought herself of a question which the exciting character of Peggy's return had temporarily banished from her thoughts. "By the way, Peggy, where are Dorothy's Christmas presents?"
Peggy sat up straight, stared at her mother, and let her work drop to the floor. "Mother Raymond!"
"Well, what is it, child?"
"Mother, they're lost."