With her admirer's small soft hand tightly clutching hers, she advances to where, under a copper beech's shade, sits Mrs. Evans—the stocking-basket banished, and engaged upon some genteeler industry—in company with a female friend.
'We were just talking of you,' says the Vicar's wife, putting out a welcoming hand. 'Let me introduce you to my cousin, Miss Jones; she has been staying in the neighbourhood of the Harboroughs; she saw Prue.'
'Did you indeed?' cries Peggy, turning with anxious interest to the new comer. 'Was she well? Did she look well?'
'She looked extremely well.'
'She must have been very well indeed, I should think,' adds Mrs. Evans, with a meaning smile. It is a smile of such significance that, for a moment, Peggy dares not ask an explanation of it; and before she can frame her question Mrs. Evans goes on. 'How very oddly people seem to amuse themselves in smart houses nowadays!—one never heard of such things when I was a girl; but I suppose, as it is the fashion, it is all right.'
'Were they—were they doing anything very strange?' asks Peggy, with rising colour and wavering voice, addressing the visitor.
'They seemed to be enjoying themselves very thoroughly,' replies the latter, with a prim evasive smile.
'They were all driving donkey tandems full gallop down the main street of the town,' cries Mrs. Evans, taking up the tale; 'it seems that there is a town about three miles from Harborough Castle. Prue was driving one!'
'Prue?'
'Yes, Prue! I was as much surprised as you can be; but it must have been Prue; there was no other unmarried girl there!' Peggy is silent. 'My cousin says it was wonderful how she got her donkeys along! She was at the head of the party; and they were all shouting—shouting at the top of their voices!' Still Margaret makes no comment. 'My cousin says that the whole town turned out to look at them; they were all at their doors and windows. I am sure so should I have been,' with a laugh; 'but it seems a childish romp for grown-up people, does not it?'