"Miss Peggy," said he, "don't let's quarrel."

He held out his hand, and I gave him mine quickly.

"No," said I, "I'm not quarrelling."

"I want to ask you something," said he. "You must answer, truly. If
I have a friend and she's doing something foolish, should I tell her?
Should I write to her brother and tell him?"

"Why," said I, "do you mean me?" Then I understood. "You think I'm not
doing very well in my psychology," I said. "You think I've made a wrong
choice." I looked at him then. I never saw him look just so. He had my
hand, and now I took it away. But he wouldn't talk about the psychology.

"Peggy," said he, "do your people know Goward?"

"They will in vacation," I said. "He's going home with me. We're
engaged, you know."

"Oh!" said he. "Oh! Then it is true. Let him meet Charles Edward at
once, will you? Tell Charles Edward I particularly want him to know
Goward." His voice sounded sharp and quick, and he turned away and left
me. But I didn't give his message to Charles Edward, and somehow, I
don't know why, I didn't talk about him after I came home. "Dane never
wrote me whether he looked you up," said Charles Edward one day. "Not
very civil of him." But even then I couldn't tell him. Mr. Dane is one
of the people I never can talk about as if they were like everybody
else. Perhaps that is because he is so kind in a sort of intimate,
beautiful way. And when I went back after vacation he had resigned, and
they said he had inherited some money and gone away, and after he went
I never understood the psychology at all. Mr. Goward used to laugh at
me for taking it, only he said I could get honors in anything, my verbal
memory is so good. But I told him, and it is true, that the last part of
the book is very dull. While I was going over all this, still with that
strange excited feeling of happiness, I heard Aunt Elizabeth's voice
from below. She was calling, softly: "Peggy! Peggy! Are you up there?"

I got on my feet just as quietly as I could, and slipped through
mother's room and down the back stairs. Mother was in the vegetable
garden watering the transplanted lettuce. I ran out to her. "Mother," I
said, "may I go over to Lorraine's and spend the night?"

"Yes, lamb," said mother. That's a good deal for mother to say.

"I'll run over now," I told her. "I won't stop to take anything.
Lorraine will give me a nightie."

I went through the vegetable garden to the back gate and out into the
street. The