er
did--you never could. Be a woman, dearest, and end this wretched mess."

"I never would have thought I loved him if I hadn't believed I'd lost
you," Peggy ruminated to herself. "But I must think--" As if she hadn't
thunk for an hour!

"How long must you think?" the doctor fired at her.

"Don't be cross at me," said she, like a baby, and that big capable man
picked up her hand and kissed it--shame on him!

"No, no, dear," he said, as meek as pie. "I'll wait--only you MUST
decide the right way, and remember that I'm waiting, and that it's
hard."

Then he put her into the cart clingingly--I'd have chucked her--and I
leaned over toward him the last thing and threw my head lovingly on one
side and rolled my eyes up and murmured at him, "Good-bye, Jack," and
started Hotspur before he could hit me.

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