“What would you do if you stayed at home?” asked Aunt Euphemia.
Peggy would not say. It spoils a game so much to explain it to other people.
“I’d just like to stay and play in the garden,” she said.
Aunt Euphemia was not at all pleased. She thought it was because Peggy did not love her that she refused to go out with her.
“Very well,” she said; “of course, I do not wish to take a little girl with me who does not care for me.”
Peggy felt sorry, but she couldn’t explain; it would have spoilt everything, you know. She stood on the steps and watched Aunt Euphemia drive away, and then she clapped her hands, and danced off into the garden. A flight of old stone steps led down from one part of the garden to another; beside the steps there was a rockery, and Peggy had found among the stones a lot of lumps of soft white chalk.
She could make her fingers as white as snow by gently rubbing the chalk over them, but the nicest thing to do with it was to pound it down into a lovely soft powder with another stone. Peggy sat on the lowest step of the stone stair and pounded the chalk on the step above her. It was delightful to do. Among the powder she found here and there a little white stone. She called them pearls, and decided to make a collection of them, so that she might string them into a necklace. It was not every lump of chalk that had a white stone in it, however, as she soon found out. But this only made it more exciting. The time slipped away so fast at this game that Peggy couldn’t believe that it really was the tea-bell she heard. “Why, auntie must have come home,” she thought, “and I must go in for tea now; but I can come out and hunt for pearls again after tea.” She gathered up her little white stones in her hand, and went slowly into the house counting them over in her palm.
“Peggy!” cried Aunt Euphemia.
Peggy had walked into the drawing-room, still counting the treasures.
“Yes, auntie,” she replied. “Oh, do look at my pearls!”