Peggy Parsons at Prep School.

by Annabel Sharp.

CHAPTER I-THE SERENADE

Peggy Parsons wove her curly hair into a golden braid, and stretching her slim arms above her head yawned sleepily.

"Oh, you mustn't do that," sn.i.g.g.e.red her room-mate out of the semi-darkness of the one-candle-power illumination. "They don't allow it here."

"Don't allow what?" said Peggy, beginning to prance before the mirror to admire the fluttering folds of her new blue silk kimono, which had been given her by a cousin the week before school opened, with the delightful label, "For Midnight Fudge Parties."

"Don't allow what?" she repeated curiously, bobbing up and down before her reflection, "can't I even _yawn_ if I want to?"

"No," her room-mate unsympathetically insisted, "they teach us manners along with our French and mathematics, and yawning isn't one,-a manner, I mean. Yawning is enough to keep you from getting high marks. This is a finishing school we've come to, please remember."

"It will finish me," sighed Peggy, with a final whirl of blue draperies, "if I can't do as I like. Why, I _always_ have."

"I'm glad I've got you for a room-mate, then," said the other girl heartily. "It will be such fun to see what happens."

Peggy blew out the candle and crept across the room, in the darkness, nearly colliding with a little rose tree that had been given to the girls to brighten their room against their possible homesickness.

"What's going to happen now is that I'm going to sleep," she laughed.

"And I'm glad I've got _you_ for a room-mate, Katherine Foster, just-anyway."

And both girls smiled into the darkness, for their first day at Andrews had given them a sense of pleasant antic.i.p.ation for the rest of the year.

Just as their vivid memories of the preceding twelve hours began to mix themselves up confusingly with dreams, the sound of singing bursting into triumphant volume under their windows caused both sleepy pairs of eyes to pop open.

"Katherine-?" breathed Peggy excitedly.

"Peggy-?" whispered Katherine, "oh, do you suppose it _is_?"

"Andrews opened late, and the other schools were already well into their football and basketball stage: that afternoon the Amherst team had been in town to play the local college football eleven, and there had been rumors that the glee club had been among those who cheered on the Amherst side."

The song came up now, sweet and strong, with its sure tenor soaring almost to their window, it seemed.

Swiftly and silently the two were out of bed and had pattered across to peep down. There they were! There they really _were_, in the moonlight, the glee club, singing up to the open dormitory windows.

"Cheer for Old Amherst, Amherst must win.

Fight to the fin-ish, _Never_ give in.

All do your best, boys, We'll do the rest, boys, For this is old Amherst's da-ay.

Rah, rah, rah...."

Peggy felt her arm being pinched black and blue, but she was beyond caring.

"O-oh, it's heavenly," she sighed.

"Peggy, it's a serenade," breathed Katherine happily.

"Of course it is," a.s.sented Peggy, as if she were used to this kind of thing, "and it's a very nice one."

"Peggy, oughtn't you to-to throw down flowers when you're serenaded?"

Katherine demanded suddenly.

"Oh, yes, you _have_ to," Peggy agreed, so that she might not show how ignorant she was of the requirements of so delightful a situation.

"We haven't any." Katherine's tone was forlorn and heartbroken.

"Wait," cried Peggy, scrambling down from the window seat where she had perched, "the roses,-off the rose tree."

And she ran to their treasured plant and seized it, jardiniere and all, and ran back to the window so that she might not miss any of the singing while she was despoiling their little tree of its blossoms. From every window in the wing a dim figure might be discerned behind the shaking lace curtains. With the plant tucked firmly under one arm Peggy leaned out dreamily.

"It's all a lovely thing to have happen," she said, "now I'm going to begin and throw the roses down. Ouch! Goodness,-oh, dear!"

She p.r.i.c.ked herself on a thorn and in jerking away her hand she forgot that she was holding anything.

The rose tree toppled an instant on the window-sill and then went down, flower pot, jardiniere and all, into those singing, upturned faces, two stories below. There followed a frightful crashing sound, and then a stupefied silence.

Peggy, covering her face with her hands, turned and ran from the window, jumped into bed and pulled the sheet over her head.

"Oh, they're dead, they're dead, and I've killed them," she thought miserably to herself.

She never wanted to hear a glee-club again, she never wanted to look into the face of a living soul. This was a fine ending of a wonderful day, this was, that she should have killed, goodness knew how many fine young men, and talented ones, too. Just when they were singing up so trustingly, for her to have hurled this calamity down upon them! She shook with sobs. Oh, she had only meant to do a kind deed, a _courteous_ deed-and she had killed them. She buried her poor little crying face deeper into the pillow.

After a few moments she felt her room-mate shaking her, and when she reluctantly uncovered her tear-stained face she was astonished to hear laughter.

"It's all right, come back to the window quickly," Katherine was chortling, "it's-just great."

Oh, the glorious shaft of light that shot across Peggy's mental horizon!

Then they weren't dead. No one-not even a heartless room-mate could laugh at her if she had really killed them. She dashed her hand across her eyes and went back to peer cautiously down in the moonlight.

Each of the singers brandished some tiny thing in the shining white light of the moon, could it be a-flower-a-_rose_?

"Little Rose Girl!

Little Rose Girl!

We'll sing and shout your praises o'er and o'er, To you ever, we'll be loyal, Till the sun shall climb the heavens no more!"

Peggy caught her breath. They were all singing straight at _her_ window,-and oh, moonlit clouds! and wonder of stars!-to _her_.

"Oh-oh, thank you," she said softly, over and over, "thank you, thank you. I'm so glad you're alive,-and I'm glad I am, too."

Fastening the tiny flowers in their b.u.t.tonholes, the glee-club began to move off. Peggy sat still in the window seat, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

The cool moonlight drifted in around her, and she breathed it in slowly.

Katherine came and curled up beside her.