Peggy’s eyes smiled at Sarita, however, as she turned from an examination of the ruffled dressing table. “Is that what you call me! I was quite a performer, wasn’t I? I just came over to tell you how much obliged I am that your brother made me jump before I got to that awful place further on. I came to say ‘thank you’ to him, and then I want you all to come over to Steeple Rocks to have dinner with us.”
“Thank you, Miss Peggy,” Elizabeth said at once. “I scarcely think that we can do that. You see, we have chiefly camping clothes, and we are not ready for dinner at a home like yours.”
“Oh, we don’t always dress for dinner. Mother lets me come in to the table in my sport things. She wants to see you. Father had to go away on business the very next day after I fell, and we haven’t seen a thing of him since. I would have been over before, but I did give my ankle a terrible wrench and then I was sick a little, too. Mother said it was ‘shock,’ but my nerves are all right!”
“I’d think that the scare you had would do something to them,” Sarita remarked.
“It is ever so good of you to ask us over,” Leslie added, glad that Elizabeth had started the “regrets,” “but Beth is right about our clothes, Peggy. You’d better visit us here. We’ll have a beach party and chowder. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“Yes, it would. I’d like to; but still, we want to have you come to Steeple Rocks, too. Where are the clothes you traveled in? You will like my mother. She is nicer than my father, and I am very sure that she will be disappointed if you can not come. She told me to bring you to-day if you would, and if you had something else that you were doing to-day, you could come to-morrow. Then she didn’t know whether you had a car, or horses, or anything, if you thought it too far to walk. It’s terribly rough for a car, of course.”
They were outside, now, sitting upon the various seats that Dalton had provided, from stones, or logs found in the woods.
“No, we haven’t any car or any horses, but it is not too far for us to walk,” gently said Elizabeth. “I still think, though, that, as Leslie says, it would be better for you to visit us here. Stay to supper with us. Dal is fishing now. Sometimes he gets a big fellow that we can scarcely eat up.”
“I wouldn’t dare stay this time, thank you. Mother would think that I’d had another accident. Besides, the boy that you saw the other day is with me. He stopped back in the woods on the way over from the road. I’d love to stay, though.” Peggy looked as if she were almost ready to yield, in spite of better judgment.
“We’ll hurry up the meal,” Leslie suggested. “There comes Dal now. Go and ask your friend to come too. It doesn’t take any time to cook fish on our portable stove, and it will be such fun to have you.”