“I’d love to see how you do it! Well, I’ll go and call Jack and see what he says.”
Dalton reached the tent just as the “circus lady” was disappearing into the woods. “‘How now, Malvolio?’” he inquired facetiously. “More communications from the Ives?”
“Peggy came to say ‘thank you,’ Dal,” Beth replied. “She is a dear little girl,—though for that matter, I imagine that she is only a year or so younger than Leslie and Sarita.”
“She just told me that she is fourteen,” said Leslie, who had walked a little distance with Peggy. “She did it in such a funny way, saying that perhaps we thought her too young to ‘play with us,’ but she would like to know us. Imagine, Dal.” Leslie looked at her brother with a funny smile that Elizabeth, naturally did not understand.
“Why is that strange?” she asked. “I know that Dal does not like Mr. Ives, from something he said; but why shouldn’t he like Peggy?”
“There isn’t any reason at all,” Dalton answered. “She did give me a lame shoulder and a few bruises and scratches on our first acquaintance, to be sure, but that was nothing.”
“This sounds as if your meeting Peggy were in a fight. Dal,” Sarita said, “but hurry up with that fish. Leslie and I will help you clean it, while Beth gets the things ready to cook it.”
Thus it happened that neither Leslie nor Sarita could offer a fishy hand to Jack Morgan, who came hurrying into camp with Peggy, his blue eyes smiling and his frank face interested, as they could clearly see. He acknowledged the introductions with the manner of a boy used to meeting people, and laughed when Leslie and Sarita displayed their hands, cleaning fish with Dalton over some paper which could be gathered up and burned later.
“I hated to be hurried away that day when Peggy scared the Ives family nearly to death, but her father and I did not know but she might be seriously hurt after all; and after being shaken up by the ride home, she was glad enough to be taken care of in a hurry, weren’t you, Peggy?”
“M’m-h’m,” nodded Peggy, watching operations with the fish. “If Dad hadn’t been so cross over nothing, I wouldn’t have minded so much.”