"What happened, Peggy?" demanded Priscilla, reading her friend’s tell-tale face as if it had been an open book. "Weren’t they nice to you?" "Nice!" cried Ruth, flaring up at the mere suggestion of ill-treating Peggy. "Why shouldn’t they be nice?" "Peggy’s blushing," exclaimed Amy, announcing a discovery sufficiently obvious to the least discerning. "She’s blushing as red as fire. Peggy Raymond, what has happened?" "It really wasn’t anything," said poor Peggy, fairly cornered. "Only--" "Well?" "Only she didn’t quite understand." "Who didn’t? That snippy, disagreeable girl, who puts on such ridiculous airs of being better than other people?" Peggy’s eyes widened over the vivid description whose appropriateness she was forced to admit. "I saw the girl," she replied hastily. "Her name’s Elaine, I think." "We don’t care about her name, Peggy. What did she do?" "At first she thought I’d come to sell the rolls, and she said they didn’t care to buy anything." "Peggy a pedler! I never heard anything so funny!" Amy sat down on the floor to laugh, but her amusement did not communicate itself to the others. Ruth’s face still wore a protesting frown, and Priscilla’s eyes were flashing. "A pedler!" Priscilla repeated disdainfully. "She must be very observing. Well, Peggy. After you explained--" "That seemed to make it all the worse," admitted Peggy, finding a little relief, it must be acknowledged, in the sympathy called out by her confession. "She can’t have been used to neighbors, that’s sure. She said they weren’t objects of charity, and shut the door in my face." An indignant explosion followed, when everybody talked at once. Then Dorothy bobbing up as expectedly as a Jack in a box, poured oil on the troubled waters by offering a suggestion. "Maybe they fought the currants was flies. I did till I bited ’em." "O, Dorothy, what a killing child you are!" cried Amy, giving way to helpless laughter, and this time she had plenty of company. Peggy was the only one of the quartet who made any effort to conceal her merriment, Peggy having a singular theory that children should be treated just as courteously as older people. She looked regretfully at the small, erect figure marching out of the room with an air of stately displeasure. "O dear!" she sighed. "I’m afraid we’ve hurt her feelings. Dorothy does hate to be laughed at." "Then she’d better give up making such speeches," remarked Amy, wiping her eyes. "But to go back to Peggy’s new friend--Elaine--" "Yes, just to think of her slamming the door in Peggy’s face," cried Ruth, whose customary gentleness had quite disappeared in resentment over Peggy’s snubbing. "If she doesn’t want neighbors she needn’t have any. I move that we let her alone, just as much as if she lived down town somewhere."