Following this conference with Mr. Tudor, Mrs. Ives and Peggy quietly went about Steeple Rocks making ready to close it early, for Mrs. Ives felt that she must get away from the place. Peggy, on the other hand, wanted to stay and asked her mother if she might not stay at the Eyrie.
“Will they want you after this?”
“I don’t see why not. I belong to the ‘trium-feminate’, you know. Sarita likes me for taking an interest in birds, and Dalton saved my life. I know that he likes me. Leslie is just like Dalton and Elizabeth is always sweet to me. Dal would like to stay all winter and keep Beth from teaching. Why, Mother, why couldn’t she tutor me? They might like a boarder that would pay and work, too, and it wouldn’t be as expensive for you, I’m sure. Think of traveling expenses and boarding, especially if we have to give nearly everything we have to the government!”
Mrs. Ives smiled. “It is not quite as bad as that, Peggy, but we shall see.”
“I’m going right over now!” declared Peggy.
This is how it came about that after a quiet summer, without the expected visit from the Lyon-Marsh party, but with cruises and hikes and picnics, Peggy Ives was still with the Secrests. She was called by her own name, Peggy or Marguerite Nave, though the girls occasionally called her Angelina for fun and Dal said that he was “always sure an angel descended when she leaped out of the air into the blackberry bushes.”
Beth had consented to tutor Peggy and take care of her as long as it seemed best for her to stay at the Eyrie, “and that may be all winter,” Peggy confided to Dalton, who nodded assent.
Jack tried in vain to persuade Dalton to go to college with him, but Dalton could not be persuaded. “No, Jack,” he said at their final talk. “You go to college, and Leslie and I may both come year after next. But I want to finish this home, and keep Beth out of school this year if possible. The way it looks now, she never will go back. It will be nip and tuck between Jim Lyon and this Evan Tudor, I think, though Jim seems to be losing out at present. I think that Beth is the heroine in that best seller that Mr. Tudor is always joking about.”
Jack nodded. “All right, Dal. I don’t blame you for wanting to fix up this place. And if you bring Leslie to my college year after next,—it will be worth waiting for.”
By fall the quaint new home was ready for cold weather. Plans had grown, with their interest, till now it included the living room with its big fireplace, two bedrooms and a tiny kitchen, though that would not be used much when it grew cold. Dalton was full of plans for plumbing and electricity and a still larger house, but Beth, while she never threw cold water on the projects, was quite content to regard this as a happy interlude and a summer home. There were more school days for Dalton and Leslie, and as for her,—she had just received a letter from Mrs. Ives which informed her that the father of Evan Tudor wanted to buy Steeple Rocks! Simply, too, Mrs. Ives wrote that she was now a widow and that the long strain of anxiety about her husband’s always impending capture was over.