But now Peggy, who all this time had been steadily eating, looked up again.
"Peggy was wondering," she said, "what's clouds. Is clouds alive?"
Thor was all ready with his "you silly girl" again, but this time Terry was before him.
"They can't be alive," he said. "They've got no hands, or feet, or mouths, and noses, and eyes, and——"
"They has noses," said Peggy, eagerly. "Peggy's seen them, and they has wings—the little ones has wings, they fly so fast. And p'raps they has got proper faces on their other sides, to look at the sun with. I've seen shiny bits of the other sides turned over."
"Yes," said Baldwin, solemnly again, as if that settled it, "so has I."
"But they're not alive, Peggy, they're really not. They fly because the wind blows them," said Terence.
"Oh!" said Peggy, with a deep-drawn breath, "I see. Then if we all blowed very hard at the window, if we all blowed together, couldn't we blow them away? I do so want to blow them away when they come over my hills."
But when she had said this she grew very red, just as if she had told something she had not meant to tell, and if any one had looked at her quite close they would have seen that there were tears in her eyes. Fortunately, however, no one had noticed her last words, for Thorold and Terence too had burst out laughing at the beginning of her speech.
"Fancy us all blowing out of the window together," they said. And they began puffing out their cheeks and pretending to blow very hard, which made them look so funny that Peggy herself burst out laughing too.