Chapter Two.
Hector Darcy knitted his brows, and started in bewilderment at the little figure before him. “Peggy Saville!” he repeated blankly. “No, you cannot mean it! The little girl who had lessons with Rob, and who saved Rosalind’s life at the time of the fire? The little girl I met at The Larches with the pale face, and the pink sash, and the pigtail down her back?”
“The self-same Peggy—at your service!”—and Miss Saville swept a curtesy in which dignity mingled with mischief. Her eyes were sparkling with pleasure, and Major the Honourable Hector Darcy—to give that gentleman his full title—looked hardly less radiant than herself. Here was a piece of luck—to make the acquaintance of an interesting and attractive girl at the very beginning of a voyage, and then to discover in her an intimate friend of the family! True, he himself had seen little of her personally, but the name of Peggy Saville was a household word with his people, and one memorable Christmas week, which they had spent together at The Larches in years gone by, might be safely accepted as the foundation of a friendship.
“Of course I remember you!” he cried. “We had fine romps together, you and I. You danced me off my feet one night, and gave me my death of cold putting up a snow man the next day. I have never forgotten Peggy Saville, but you have changed so much that I did not recognise you, and I did not see your name.”
“I noticed yours in the list of passengers, and then I looked out for you, and recognised you at once. There was a Darcy look about the back of your head which could not be mistaken! I meant to ask father to introduce you to me after lunch, but the book has taken his place. So you think I have changed! I have ‘growed,’ of course, and the pigtail has disappeared; but in other respects there is not so much alteration as could be desired. My father tells me, on an average three times a day, that I shall remain the same ‘Peggy-Pickle’ all my life.”
“That sounds bad! So far as my remembrance goes, you used to be a mischievous little person, always getting into scrapes and frightening the wits out of your companions.”
“Ah!” sighed Miss Saville dolorously. “Ah–h!” She shook her head with a broken-hearted air, and looked so overwhelmed with compunction for her misdeeds, that if it had not been for a treacherous dimple that defied her control, the major would have felt remorseful at awakening a painful memory. As it was he laughed heartily, and cried aloud:
“When you look like that, I can see you again with the pigtail and the white frock, just as you looked that Christmas half-a-dozen years ago! Your father is right—you have not changed a bit from the little Peggy I used to know!”
“I’m a full-fledged young lady now, Major Darcy, and have been ‘out’ for three whole years. I’ve grown into ‘Miss Saville,’ or at the very least into ‘Mariquita.’”