“Oh, I should indeed. Fancy wearing something I had made myself! I’d be so proud. I’ll have mine very, very simple, as plain as possible.”
“I sha’n’t! Mine shall be elaborate and fussy and mysterious—one of those things in which you cannot see any fastenings, or imagine how on earth the owner gets in or out. There’s a model in this week’s Queen which will be just the thing, and I have a piece of flowered pink silk upstairs which will do for you as well as for me. It is a remnant which I bought in Paris. I have a mania for remnants. I always think they will come in usefully, but somehow they don’t. This will be the exception, however, and it will be nice to be alike!”
“Thank you so much; but you won’t tell any one what we are going to do, will you? We had better not say anything yet, in case we don’t succeed.”
“Don’t succeed, indeed! Don’t let me hear such words, my dear, I beg! To imagine failure is to invite defeat!” Peggy shook her head with her most copy-book air. “We shall succeed, and therefore it would be selfish to keep our plans to ourselves. It will be quite an excitement in prospect. Let me see: to-day is Tuesday. How would it be if we said Saturday night?”
“Too soon! Too soon! I should say a week at the very soonest. We can’t manage in less.”
“Oh yes, we can if we try. We will give up our mornings to work, and the afternoons to pleasure. There is very little making in a blouse—three seams, and the sleeves, that’s all! Four days are quite enough; besides, it is really five, for we will begin this morning.”
“Now? At once? But I haven’t thought, I haven’t planned, nothing is ready! Surely it would be wise to wait, and think it over first?”
But impetuous Peggy could not be brought to acknowledge that procrastination could ever be wise. If she had had her way, she would have been hard at work hacking out her blouse within ten minutes of its first suggestion; but fortunately for all concerned Arthur appeared upon the scene at this minute, and put down his foot at the mention of sewing.
“Not if I know it, on a beautiful summer afternoon! Leave that until it rains, or I don’t need your society. Now I do. I want you to come over to the vicarage with me, while I pay my congratulations to the bride. I’ve got an offering for her too. Something I brought from town, and I want you to carry it for me.”
“So likely, isn’t it?” sniffed Peggy scornfully. “It shall never be said of me that I trained my brother so badly that I carried even an umbrella in his company! What is it, Arthur? Do tell us? What have you got?”