Now, thank the stars, there's just one or two little items more that I've got to write. One is what I heard mother tell father when they were on the front piazza alone, and I was teaching the puppy to beg, right in sight of them on the grass. They think I'm an earless freak, maybe. She told him that dear Peggy was growing into such a strong, splendid woman; that she'd been talking to her, and she thought the child would be able to give up her weak, vacillating lover with hardly a pang, because she realized that he was unworthy of her; that Peg had said she couldn't marry a man she didn't admire--and wasn't that noble of her? Noble, your grandmother--to give up a perfect lady like Harry Goward, when she's got a real man up her sleeve! I'd have made them sit up and take notice if I hadn't promised not to tell. Which reminds me that I ought to explain how I got Dr. Denbigh to let me write this for Lorraine. I put it to him strongly, you see, about the cookies, and at first he said. “Not on your life! Not in a thousand years!” And then-- But what's the use of writing that? Lorraine is on to all that. But, my pickles! won't there be a circus when Alice finds out that I've known things she didn't! Won't Alice be hopping--gee! XI. PEGGY, by Alice Brown “Remember,” said Charles Edward--he had run in for a minute on his way home from the office where he has been clearing out his desk, “for good and all,” he tells us--“remember, next week will see us out of this land of the free and home of the talkative.” He meant our sailing. I shall be glad to be with him and Lorraine. “And whatever you do. Peg, don't talk, except to mother. Talk to her all you want to. Mother has the making of a woman in her. If mother'd been a celibate, she'd have been, also, a peach.” “But I don't want to talk,” said I. “I don't want to talk to anybody.” “Good for you,” said Charles Edward. “Now I'll run along.” I sat there on the piazza watching him, thinking he'd been awfully good to me, and feeling less bruised, somehow, than I do when the rest of the family advise me--except mother! And I saw him stop, turn round as if he were coming back, and then settle himself and plant his feet wide apart, as he does when the family question him about business. Then I saw somebody in light blue through the trees, and I knew it was Aunt Elizabeth. Alice was down in the hammock reading and eating cookies, and she saw her, too. Alice threw the book away and got her long legs out of the hammock and ran. I thought she was coming into the house to hide from Aunt Elizabeth. That's what we all do the first minute, and then we recover ourselves and go down and meet her. But Alice dropped on her knees by my chair and threw her arms round me. “Forgive, Peggy,” she moaned. “Oh, forgive!” I saw she had on my fraternity pin, and I thought she meant that. So I said, “You can wear it today”; but she only hugged me the tighter and ran on in a rigmarole I didn't understand.