"Oh, are you hurt?" cried Peggy, running quickly to her with Billy at her heels.
"Oh, I s'pose she'll cry and bring mother out!" Keineth heard Billy say behind Peggy's back.
Keineth's cheeks were very red. She stood up quickly and, though for a moment everything danced before her eyes, she managed to laugh and speak in a queer voice she scarcely recognized as her own.
"'Course I'm not hurt! A little fall like that!" she brushed the sand from her blouse.
"Peggy," cried Billy, joyfully, "she's a real scout!" and Keineth knew then that she was one of them.
Even Peggy's tone was different. "Let's ask mother if we can't go down to the beach before lunch!" she called out over her shoulder, starting houseward on a run.
That night a very tired little girl crept into her cot between Barbara's and Peggy's. Alice was already asleep on the other side of Peggy. Barbara was still on the veranda talking with her mother and father. A soft land breeze, all sweet with garden smells, fanned their faces as the girls lay there. What a day it had been to Keineth--she had played in the sand, waded in the warm shallows of the lake, raced with Peggy and Alice through the fields all white with daisies and had gathered great bunches of the pretty flowers! She thought, as she lay there watching the little stars peeping under the edge of the roof, that she had never been so happy in her life! She loved Overlook and all the Lees--and Peggy, best of all.
In whispers, reaching out from their cots to clasp hands, she and Peggy opened their hearts to one another. She told Peggy all about poor, nice Tante and about the old house and Francesca Ferocci and Aunt Josephine and Fido and the French maid, and the tenants on the third floor and her Daddy--who'd gone away on a secret. Peggy, very sleepily pictured what they'd do on the morrow and the day after and the day after that. Later, when Mrs. Lee went her rounds, as she always did, tucking a cover under each loved chin, she found Keineth's fair curls very close to Peggy's round bobbed head and their hands still clasping.