“Set the table,” added Peggy with a laugh, as she rolled down her sleeves. “And don’t thee dally too long talking with thy friends, Peggy. Thee didn’t add that, mother.”
“As thee knows thy weakness it might be well to bear it in mind,” commented her mother with a smile.
The kitchen was the principal apartment of a long low building attached to the main dwelling by a covered entry way. Through this Peggy went to the hall and on to the dining-room, where she began laying the table. This room adjoined the sitting-room, and, as the bursts of merriment became more and more frequent, the maiden softly opened the connecting door and peeped in.
A tall youth of soldierly bearing, in the uniform of the Light Infantry, his epaulettes denoting the rank of major, leaned carelessly against one end of the mantelpiece. On a settle drawn up before the fire sat two girls. One held a book from which she was reading aloud, and both the other girl and the youth were so intent upon her utterances that they did not notice Peggy’s entrance. They turned toward her eagerly as she spoke:
“Aren’t you getting hungry, or are you too interested to stop for dinner?”
“’Tis quite time thee was coming, Peggy,” cried the girl who had been reading, tossing back her curly locks that, innocent of powder, hung in picturesque confusion about her face. “I really don’t know what we are to do with Betty here. Since she hath taken to young lady ways there’s no living with her.”
“What has thee been doing, Betty Williams?” queried Peggy with mock gravity, turning toward the other girl. Her hair was done high over a cushion, profusely powdered, and she waved a large fan languidly.
“Sally is just talking, Peggy,” she said. “She and Robert seem to find much amusement in some of my remarks. ’Tis just nothing at all. Sally Evans is the one that needs to be dealt with.”
“Sally hath been reading to us from your diary, which you kept for the Social Select Circle while you were in Virginia,” explained Robert Dale. “We were much entertained anent the account of your bashful friend, Fairfax Johnson. Betty amused us by telling just what she would have done with him had she been in your place.”