Grace shrugged her shoulders with an elfish gesture.
"How should I know? It appears she sees ghosts. A ghost must be hard up, one would think, to visit my Puggy; there ought to be an asylum for impoverished spectres. Would you subscribe for it, Owls? Good-bye! I must go. You mean well, and I don't bear malice. Oh! by the by,—" she came back for an instant, and stood balancing herself on one foot and looking round the edge of the door, and she certainly looked hardly human,—"I forgot the thing I came for. Stand by the Innocent this evening, will you, if she should get into trouble? I am sent for to the study, and shall be in for a good hour's lecture, and then bed."
"What do you mean, Goat? What is it?" asked both girls, anxiously. But the Goat was gone.
Peggy was enjoying herself extremely. She had learned all her lessons, for a wonder, and now she had curled herself up in a corner with the "Jungle Book," and the rest of the world was forgotten. There was nobody, there never had been anybody, but Mowgli and the Wolves. She had hunted with them, she had slain Shere-Khan, she had talked with Baloo and Bagheera. Her outdoor nature had responded in every fibre to the call of the Master of Magic, and he filled her with joy and wonder. As the Snowy had said, the worlds were opening, and the doors thereof.
Things being thus with her, she hardly heard her own door open softly. Before she had torn her eyes from the enchanted page, the room was filled with silent, flitting figures—as it had been often filled before. The girls nodded to her with silent laughter and friendly gestures. In another moment they would have been at the window; but Peggy was not dreaming now. In an instant she had sprung from her corner among the cushions, and stood before the window, with arms outspread. "No!" she said.
The girls recoiled, paused, in amazement. There were six of them: the two V's, Blanche Haight, and three other sophomores. Peggy saw with a throb of joy that Grace Wolfe was not among them. That would have made it harder.
"What does this mean?" asked Vivia Varnham, with her cold smile. "You have never made any trouble before, Peggy; isn't it rather late in the day?"
"Oh, she's only in fun!" cried Viola Vincent. "Aren't you, Veezy-vee? Why, she's acting, girls, and she does it elegantly. It's perf'ly fine, Veezy-vee. I didn't know you had it in you."
"No, I am not acting," said Peggy, quietly. "I am sorry, girls, but you can't go out. You never can go out again, so long as I am here."