"Send your poems! Brilliant idea!" exclaimed the incorrigible Peggy. "Have them printed on separate slips of paper, and sign some queer name, and say a member of the congregation wrote them, and see how they take."
"I don't care to have you make any more fun of me and my writings," said Millicent, with great dignity.
"No fun, honor bright! Only I wish you would put in one about Cousin Appolina Briggs. If you don't, I believe I will. You could lend me your rhyming dictionary to do it with, and I believe I could write a poem as well as—anybody. But haven't you got anything on hand that you don't want, in the way of fancy-work, that you might send?"
"I have those worsted slippers Cousin Appolina gave me for Christmas. They are in the box, just as she sent them."
"The very thing! Who wants her old worsted slippers? And fairs are always full of them. And you will have your poems printed and send them, won't you, dear child?"
Her cousin did not see the gleam of mischief which came into Peggy's eyes as she said this. Millicent was pondering the situation too deeply. Peggy had never dreamed until now that she would take the proposition seriously.
"I believe I will," said the poetess, after some minutes' pause, interrupted only by the admiring Joanna, who urged her sister to act upon Peggy's suggestion. "It would give me the recognition I want. They can be sold at five cents a copy, and if I see people buying I shall know that they are liked, and then some day I might have some published in a book. Thank you ever so much, Peggy, for thinking of it. I will sign them 'Pearl Proctor,' just as I do those that I send to the magazines, and no one will ever know who it is. I will have them type-written on attractive paper. And I will send Cousin Appolina's shoes. She won't be home from Washington until after the fair, and she will never know. They had really better be doing some good."
"She wouldn't recognize them, anyhow; she is so near-sighted that even that gold lorgnette wouldn't discover her own stitches. Well, good-by, girls. I'm going."
Unknown to her cousins, Peggy slipped away with the rhyming dictionary under her arm. She had discovered it on the table, and the opportunity was too good to be wasted.
She crossed the street to her own home and retired to her own room, from which she did not emerge for an hour or more. At dinner that night her family, had they looked at her with attention, might have discovered an additional expression of mischief in her eyes and a satisfied look on her face. But fortunately one's family are not apt to notice.