"Jean, I won't have you say that."
"Well, the Merryweathers say it all the time, Peggy. They never say anything else, except when Margaret is round; you know they don't."
"The Merryweathers are boys, and you are a girl, and there is all the difference in the world," said Peggy, loftily. "Jean, it is high time you went to school."
"Oh, bother school! I have two ponies to break this fall, and Pa has promised to let me drive the reaper around the hundred-acre field."
Peggy said nothing, being a wise as well as an affectionate elder sister; but she resolved to consult Hugh, and to write to "Pa" without delay.
So the morning passed in preparation and mystery. Then in the afternoon came a drive in the great open car, a delightful vehicle, holding eight people comfortably. Peggy sat on the box—happy Peggy!—and drove the spirited black horses. Uncle John was by her side, and they recalled merrily the day when, as John Strong, he took his first drive with her, and decided that she was to be trusted with a horse.
"Oh, what fun we did have that summer!" cried Peggy. "Only—we had no Uncle John. Oh, Uncle, if we had Rita here, wouldn't it be too absolutely perfect for anything?"
"It would be very delightful," said Mr. Montfort. "I would give a good deal to see that dark-eyed lassie and her gallant Jack. I think I must take you and Margaret to Cuba one of these days, Peggy, to see them. How would you like that, Missy?"
"Oh, Uncle John!" cried Peggy; and she almost dropped the whip, in the effort to squeeze his arm and turn a corner at the same moment.
But the best of all was when the whole family assembled in the library before supper, the girls in their very prettiest dresses, with flowers in their hair, the lads brave in white duck waistcoats, with roses and ferns in their buttonholes. Then the girls presented the gifts they had made for the beloved uncle; Margaret's book, a fine old copy of the "Colloquies of Erasmus," bound by her own hands in gold-stamped brown leather, Peggy's mermaid-penwiper, with a long tail of sea-green sewing silk, and the pincushion on which Jean had spent many painful hours in her efforts to make the ferns look like ferns instead of like green hen feathers. Grace had woven a basket of sweet rushes, of quaint and graceful pattern, which Mr. Montfort declared was what he had dreamed of all his life, while Hugh produced a box of wonderful cigars, which had a history as mysterious and subtle as their fragrance. Lastly, the Merryweathers, declaring that they had no gift but themselves, and that if Mr. Montfort would be graciously pleased to accept them, they were his, proceeded to go through a series of acrobatic performances, which brought cries of admiration from all the beholders.