"I don't know if they're all white, but I think they are mostly. And there are some pretty and some ugly. Of course it depends a good deal upon the people that live in them. If they're nice, clean, busy people, who like their house to be neat and pretty, and work hard to keep it so, of course it's much more likely to be so than if they were careless and lazy."
"Oh," said Peggy, clasping her hands. "I do so hope my cottage has nice people living in it. I think it has, don't you, mamma? It looks so white."
"My dear Peggy," said mamma, smiling, "we can't tell, when it's so far away. But we may hope so."
"Yes," said Peggy, "we'll hope so, and we'll think so." But then a rather puzzled look came over her face again, though she smiled too. "Mamma," she went on, "there's such a funny thing come into my head, only I don't know quite how to say it. I think that the far-away helps to make it pretty—why is far-away so pretty, mamma?"
Mamma smiled again.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you why. Wouldn't it spoil some things if we knew the why of them, little Peggy?"
Peggy did not answer. This was another new thought for her, and rather a difficult one. She put it away in her mind, in one of the rather far back cupboards there, and locked it up, to think about it afterwards.
"Mamma," she said, coaxingly, "I want you to tell me a real fancy about the cottage. It will be so nice when I look at it to think it's most likely reely like that."
"Well, then, let us see," mamma began.
"Wait just one minute, mamma dear, till I've shut my eyes. First I must get the bluey hills and the white spot into them, and then I'll shut them and see what you tell. Yes—that's all right now."