"Not my fault," said Margaret, merrily, "if you are a bat as well as a dozen other animals, my dear. Well, girls—oh, I am ashamed, and it really is most astonishingly virtuous of me to tell you about it. Peggy, just before you came, I was very blue; deeply, darkly, most unbeautifully blue!"
"Margaret! you, blue?"
"Hear Peggy making rhymes! Yes, I, blue. You see, the children were gone, and I did miss them so, I hardly knew how to bear it. It is impossible for any one to have any idea, girls, how children, children that are little enough to need one's care, you know, and—and watching, and thinking about, and all—how they get inside your heart and just live there, all curled up in it, bless them! and these particular children are the very dearest ones that ever lived, I do believe. Well, so they were gone, and my heart seemed empty; wickedly and abominably empty, for there was my own dearest uncle, and there were you, my own Peggy, coming to spend the whole summer with me, and as if that were not joy enough for three people, let alone one, I made all kinds of plans, about studying, and teaching you housekeeping, and embroidery, and all kinds of things. We were going to read so many hours a day, and work so many hours,—my poor Peggy! you would have had an unmerciful kind of time!—and everything was going to be quiet and regular and cheerful; I never got beyond cheerfulness in my brightest dreams of the summer. But even the cheerfulness was far ahead, and just then—before you came—I really had difficulty sometimes in keeping a cheerful face for Uncle John when he came in. Why—must I tell the whole?"
"Yes, Margaret, every word!"
"I used to go up to Susan D.'s room and cry over her little pinafores and things. As for my pincushion, I fairly soaked it with tears when I first found it. I told you about the pincushion, didn't I? Why, that little lamb, for days before she went, was working away at something, she would not let me see what. After she was gone, I went up to my room for a quiet cry, and there was a gorgeous new pincushion, and 'I love you,' on it in pins. My dear little girl! Well, girls, so—that was the way I felt, and the way I acted, most absurdly; and then—all this happened. First Hugh dropped from the skies; and then Uncle proposed the house party, and you came, Jean, and the Merryweathers; and then you, Peggy; and we discovered our dear Grace; and so, instead of a quiet, rather humdrum summer, I am having the most enchanting, Arabian-nights kind of time that ever was. And how do you think I feel?"
"Phil would say 'like thirty cents!'" said Jean, who was certainly a little inclined to be pert.
"If I hear you say anything of the kind, young one, I'll swat—"
"Peggy, dearest!" murmured Margaret, softly.
"I'll speak to you very severely. I am ashamed of you, Kidderminster!"
"Look here, Peggy, I won't stand that!" said Jean. "You promised me, when I first came, that you wouldn't call me that."