nned broadly.

"If you can make 'em run," he replied, "by licking 'em or scaring 'em or
anything else, I'll see you get a medal. Why, Bess here is twenty-three
years old." He struck the animal a resounding smack upon the flank which
demonstration caused Bess to prick one ear reflectively. "Her frisky
days are over," continued Joe, "and Nat ain't much better. A baby in
arms could drive 'em."

In spite of such encouraging assurances, Peggy did not feel at all
certain of her ability to manage the double team on hilly country roads.
Priscilla's father kept a horse, it was true, but he was a rather
spirited animal, and neither Priscilla nor her mother ever attempted to
drive him. "They'll all insist on my driving," thought Peggy, as she
turned her face toward Dolittle Cottage. "And what if I should drive
into a gully and spill them out? I've half a mind to go back and see if
Mr. Cole can possibly spare Joe."

But before Peggy had time to retrace her steps, a somewhat familiar
figure came into view at the turn of the road, a girl in a sunbonnet,
with a tin pail in either hand. Peggy hurried forward to greet her,
rejoicing in a possible solution of her problem.

"Oh, good afternoon. Do you know how to drive?"

Lucy Haines looked as surprised as if she had been questioned as to her
ability to button her own shoes. "Why, of course," she answered staring.

"I thought so. Then don't you want to go on a picnic with us to-morrow
and drive the horses? Joe says a baby could manage them, but I don't
feel equal to it, and I'm sure the other girls won't. If you'll come,"
added Peggy with sudden inspiration, "we'll have a berry-picking bee,
and all fall to and help you, to make up for your squandering a day on
us."

"Oh, you wouldn't have to do that," protested Lucy; "I'd love to go if I
could really help you."

With all her powers of intuition, Peggy was far from guessing what her
impulsive invitation meant to this ambitious girl whose life had been
pathetically bare of pleasure. The girls of Dolittle Cottage would have
been vastly surprised had they known how carefree and opulent they
seemed to Lucy, whose rapt absorption in the task of realizing her
ambition involved the danger that she would forget how to enjoy herself.
Had Peggy's invitation come in any other way, the chances are that Lucy
would have declined it, her sensitive pride rendering her suspicious of
kindnesses uncalled-for, from her point of view. It was quite ano