"Mrs. Saville was right—Peggy is a most expensive person!" cried Mrs. Asplin in dismay, when the bills for repairs came in, but when the Vicar suggested the advisability of a reproof, she said, "Oh, poor child; she is so lonely—I haven't the heart to scold her," and Peggy continued to detail accounts of her latest misfortune with an air of exaggerated melancholy, which barely concealed the underlying satisfaction. It required a philosophic mind to be able to take damages to personal property in so amiable a fashion; but occasionally Peggy's pickles took an irresistibly comical character. The story was preserved in the archives of the family of one evening when the three girls had been sent upstairs to wash their abundant locks and dry them thoroughly before retiring to bed. A fire was kindled in the old nursery which was now used as a sewing-room, and Mrs. Asplin, who understood nothing if it was not the art of making young folks happy, had promised a supper of roast apples and cream when the drying process was finished.
Esther and Mellicent were squatted on the hearth, in their blue dressing-gowns, when in tripped Peggy, fresh as a rose, in a long robe of furry white, tied round the waist with a pink cord. One bath towel was round her shoulders, and a smaller one extended in her hands, with the aid of which she proceeded to perform a fancy dance, calling out instructions to herself the while, in imitation of the dancing-school mistress. "To the right—two—three! To the left—two—three! Spring! Pirouette! Atti—tude!" She stood poised on one foot, towel waving above her head, damp hair dripping down her back, while Esther and Mellicent shrieked with laughter, and drummed applause with heel and toe. Then she flopped down on the centre of the hearth, and there was an instantaneous exclamation of dismay.
"Phew! What a funny smell! Phew! Phew! Whatever can it be?"
"I smelt it too. Peggy, what have you been doing? It's simply awful!"
"Hair-wash, I suppose, or the soap—I noticed it myself. It will pass off," said Peggy easily; but at that moment Mrs. Asplin entered the room, sniffed the air, and cried loudly—
"Bless me, what's this? A regular Apothecaries Hall! Paregoric! It smells as if someone had been drinking quarts of paregoric! Peggy, child, your throat is not sore again?"
"Not at all, thank you. Quite well. I have taken no medicine to-day."
"But it is you, Peggy—it really is!" Mellicent declared. "There was no smell at all before you came into the room. I noticed it as soon as the door was opened, and when you came and sat down beside us—whew! simply fearful!"
"I have taken no medicine to-day," repeated Peggy firmly. Then she started, as if with a sudden thought, lifted a lock of hair, sniffed at it daintily, and dropped it again with an air of conviction. "Ah, I comprehend! There seems to have been a slight misunderstanding. I have mistaken the bottles. I imagined that I was using the mixture you gave me, but——"