One look, and she crumpled down on the stile steps to burst into a flood of tears, tears of pure joy.
All gay in red and blue calico Tillie and Peggy stood in the farmhouse doorway. A moment more and they had left the house to come racing toward Cherry.
In the meantime the fighting planes had gone beyond the hill, quite out of her sight. Soon she was hugging two tumble-haired young sprites to her bosom, and exclaiming: “Tillie! Peggy! You are safe! I was, Oh! So afraid!”
“But the playhouse is all blowed up.” Tillie dabbed at her eyes.
“Yes!” exclaimed Peggy, dancing a jig. “But were we bombed! And was it exciting! Just like fireworks! Only bigger! Much louder! There was smoke, and then Oops! Up went everything!”
In vast astonishment Cherry stared at this small bit of humanity from the slums of London. Her eyes were on the child for a full minute. Then, mustering up her courage she managed a low chuckle. Then, springing to her feet, she cried: “Come on! Let’s go see! We’ll make it a race!” And so the four of them, three girls and a dog, went racing away.
When at last they stood by the ruins of what had once been a grand playhouse, almost a living thing to her, Cherry was ready to weep.
How very much that playhouse had meant to her! It was only an abandoned smoke-house, with the pleasant odor of burning wood and smoking meat still clinging to it, but she had made of it a sort of second home. What grand times she and Alice had known there! And of late, how Tillie and Peggy had gloried in it! They had called it “Home of our Dolls.”
“The dolls!” Cherry exclaimed as she recalled it all. “Where are they?”
As if in answer to her appeal, the dog, Flash, went racing about to return almost at once with the remains of a doll held lightly between his teeth.