"One day she was picking currants, and I had been sitting by her, playing with some hollyhock flowers she had given me. She did not notice when I crawled away, but suddenly she heard me give a queer sort of scream. She turned round, and there was a big panther dragging me off down the garden path by my dress. Ma felt as if she was dead for a minute; but then she ran back to the seed-house--it was only a few steps off--and got a hoe that she knew was there, and tore off after the panther. It wasn't going very fast, for I was a pretty heavy baby, and it didn't know at first that any one was after it. When it heard Ma coming it started off quicker, and had almost got to the woods when she caught up. Ma raised that hoe and brought it down on the beast's head as hard as she knew how. It dropped me, and turned on her, grinning and snarling, and curling its claws all ready for a spring. She never stopped to draw breath; she raised the hoe again, and that time, she says, she prayed to the swing of it; and she brought it down, and heard the creature's skull go crash under it, and felt the hoe sink in. The panther gave a scream and rolled over, and then Ma rolled over too; and when Pa came home to dinner, a few minutes later, they were both lying there still, and I was trying to pick up my hollyhock flowers. We have never had hollyhocks since then; Ma can't bear 'em." There was no doubt about the effect of Peggy's story. Before it was finished Rita was sitting bolt upright, her chinchilla robe thrown back, her hands clasped over her knee, her eyes alight with interest; and Margaret cried, "Oh, Peggy, Peggy, what a splendid story!" "Well, it's true!" said Peggy. "Of course it is; that's the splendid part. Oh, I am so proud to have an aunt so brave and strong. Aunt--why, Peggy, you have never told me your mother's name!" "You never asked," said Peggy. "Her name is Susan." Margaret blushed, and mentally applied the scourge to herself. It was true; she never had asked. Peggy had said that her mother had no education, and had got along very well without it; this was all that Margaret wanted to know. A shallow, ignorant woman, who had let her child grow up in such ignorance as Peggy's; and now she learned, all in a moment, of a strong, brave woman, helping her husband to clear the waste where their home was to be, making that home, bringing up her great family in love and rude plenty, and killing wild beasts with her own hard, honest hand. Margaret was learning a good deal this summer, and this was one of the most salutary lessons. She bowed her head and accepted it, but she only said aloud: "Aunt Susan! I hope I shall know her some day. I shall put her in my heroine book, Peggy, from this minute." And the tone was so warm and hearty that Peggy's eyes filled with tears, and she felt dimly that she, too, had been neglectful of "Ma" of late, and resolved to write a good long letter that very afternoon.