So it happened that when the rest of the girls were packing their suit-cases with joyous exclamations over everything they put in, Peggy, too, was packing hers. And when the happy party stepped into its several cabs, she was at, last triumphantly wearing the very brown taffeta that she thought ideal for the train, and her face was as beaming as the spring morning. What chattering went on inside those jolting cabs, what hopes, what surmises, what antic.i.p.ations filled those youthful hearts!

When they stepped out at the station, a breathless boy from the florist's ran up to the group panting out, "Miss Parsons, where is Miss Parsons, please? I ran over to the school but I got there just too late."

And when Peggy, her face flushing with surprise and pleasure, admitted that she was the one sought, he eagerly handed her, not one box, but two, and amid the excitement of the crowding girls, Peggy unwrapped them then and there. One was fragrant with the most generous bunch of violets she had ever seen, tied with the daintiest lavender ribbon and thrust through with a violet pin so that she might transfer the glowing beauty of them from the box and tissue wrappings to her coat at once. The other box was white with lilies of the valley, and Peggy buried her bright face in their sweetness ecstatically. Then she bethought her to look for cards.

"Because, of course, magical as it seems, getting here like this just as I am about to start, and not knowing a single person I'd dream would send me any flowers, still, I suppose somebody _did_ like me enough to do it. So I'll-just-see-"

Her inquiring fingers slid inside the envelope that came with the lilies of the valley.

"Mr. Huntington," she read. Then with increasing excitement she opened the other little envelope and her eyes danced as she read that card.

"James Huntington Smith."

"Oh, how lovely of them, how lovely," she cried. And then and there with hasty fingers, she mingled the lilies of the valley in with the violets, and gleefully pinned on the whole gorgeous if somewhat too conspicuous bunch. In stories, the girls who receive flowers divide them up among their friends. But in life, how seldom, how seldom! With a finer appreciation of the intentions of those who sent them, they are quite delightedly selfish with them, and almost any real live girl would have combined two bunches, if they were flowers that went well together, as Peggy did, and would have worn them that way, and been proud to do it, too.

There is something about the wearing of flowers sent by a really interesting person that just tips the whole day with a kind of satisfied glory. Peggy's manner instantly took on a lovely graciousness and sweetness, for she was wearing the evidence that two people liked her and wanted her to have a good time, and it behooved her to live up to the added beauty the flowers lent her.

It was a very long ride down to their destination, and Peggy had time to conjure up in her mind all the pictures she had ever seen of men in the navy, and battleships, and cannons, and such warlike objects. She thrilled to the thought of such a life, with its roving over the whole world after school was done, in those great gray floating forts of cruisers with their long sinister guns always ready for whatever might deserve their cruel attention. Even when women vote, she thought, there would be no such glory of open sea for them. There would still be heights on which men would dwell where women could never expect to climb. Well, came the comforting thought, but the women could go and dance with these wonders that were afraid of nothing! They could be waited on by them, too, and served to ices! My, my! Well, it wasn't so bad after all. Peggy began to feel that everything in the world was pretty well balanced after all. And she was glad that she lived in so fine a place, and that she was young and nice looking, and that she had a pink dress in her suit-case.

When they came to Annapolis at last and the party descended, all excitement, Peggy could hardly wait to appear at the scene of the coming festivities. But they were taken first to their rooms at the inn and there they left their baggage and powdered their noses, and fluffed their hair and then sallied forth once more, this time to go through the archway right into the Annapolis grounds, with the white buildings just as Peggy had dreamed, and the midshipmen and girls strolling and laughing together along the walks. They went to the reception room while Mrs. Forest sent up their cards. It had been arranged that certain of the young men were to come down and take charge of the party for the afternoon and evening. And while they were waiting Peggy looked at the other occupants of the reception room. Did the hearts of any go bounding along as much as those of the Andrews girls? Peggy, seeing no one but several middle-aged women, thought it was not likely. But perhaps she was wrong, for these were mothers, and they had not seen their sons since the beginning of the term. Would they be changed? Would they be glad to see them there for the games, and pilot them around as loyally as if they had been slight, laughing, dimpled young girls like that charming group yonder? Perhaps there was even more excitement in it for them than for the Andrews girls, but Peggy couldn't know.

When at last the group arrived who were to pilot the girls about for the afternoon, Peggy was conscious of being introduced to one pleasant-faced young man after another, each in uniform, and each with a certain indescribable quality of self-possession and the ability to do just the right thing that characterizes the boys who are trained in our naval Academy. Would the girls rather go out on the water and see the boat races, or would they go over to the baseball game? It was a sort of a three-ringed circus day at the Academy.

Some girls wanted to go out in the launches, others thought the glare of sun on the baseball field would not burn their noses so badly. Peggy just couldn't make up her mind to give up either of them.

"Oh, couldn't I, _couldn't_ I see a little bit of both?" she cried pleadingly to the boy who had consulted her. "It's just one day out of the whole world you know, and I want to get everything I can in it!"

Whatever slight restraint there might have been in first meeting fell away at her frank eagerness, and the boy's expression a.s.sumed at once an alert interest in giving her as good a time as could be crammed into the hours before them. Out in the little rocking boat they went dancing over the water with the full blazing glare of the afternoon sun across it and in their eyes. She saw the race and cheered with the rest, though, unless she had been told every little while, she would not have known which boat was which. Every few minutes she turned to laugh her supreme delight into the equally radiant face of her companion, and the two were as good friends at once as if they had known each other for years.

Long before the sport on the water was over, however, Harold Wilbering, her new friend, insisted that they must leave if they really wanted to see anything of the game. She said reluctantly that she still wanted to, so they went bounding and leaping back over the waves and hurriedly made their laughing way toward the ball grounds. As they pa.s.sed one of the buildings, Peggy heard a strange tick-ticking sound that was someway very interesting and compelling. She felt that it meant something, and was vaguely troubled by its persistence.

"What is that sound?" she found courage to ask at last.

"Oh, the wireless," her companion answered indifferently.

The wireless! Right down that curious looking instrument, the thing sputtered and ticked! Oh, how queer it was to be where all the mysteries of the great sea were everyday commonplaces, as the wireless evidently was to the midshipmen. Perhaps some great ship was calling its distress, or signaling. Perhaps those very little sputters were the messages of a British war ship on its way to battle with the German cruisers! It did not take long for Peggy to picture herself as listening at the moment to one of the most stirring sea-messages of history-more important than the famous, "We have met the enemy and they are ours," that she had once learned about in school, back in her grammar days. She forgot to talk to her young companion for fully five minutes under the stimulus of this beautiful idea!

When they came to the ball grounds and climbed into the bleacher seats, which were the only kind there were, the sun pouring generously down on them all the while, Peggy thought more of the crowd than of the game.

She looked along the rows of backs ahead of them, and envied some of the girls for their very self-possessed, experienced appearance, and was glad she was not others with their too fancy clothes and their excess of furbelows, of tulle bows, and earrings and coat chains.

Some of the Andrews girls, with Mrs. Forest and Miss Carrol, were sitting near, and Peggy noticed that they all leaned forward to look at her with a strangely intent expression in spite of their interest in the game. Something was wrong? Or was it that she looked so nice? Peggy hoped devoutly that this was the cause of their unanimous attention.

So she went right ahead and had as good a time here watching the game as she had just enjoyed on the water. Her face was in the sunlight most of the time, for her hat did not shade it as most of the girls' hats did theirs. But Peggy had never minded sunlight and she didn't see why she should begin now, so she leaned out confidently while the hot blaze came full on cheek and nose. The dazzle from the water had already had the best of it, however, and her face was really beyond a much deeper dye of red than it had already a.s.sumed.

She discovered this later, when the girls, after a light supper, were all in their rooms at the Inn, excitedly pulling out their pretty dresses for the evening and wiping their faces with all manner of soft creams and lotions after they had scrubbed them to a healthy glow. Poor Peggy gave one look in the gla.s.s and sank helplessly down on the bed and buried her small burned face in the pillow.

"It's no use, it's no use," she sighed. "Katherine and Florence, did you ever hear of such a tragedy? And my dress is pink! Oh, dear, oh, me, oh, my!"

But the drifting pictures of the afternoon's happiness were going through her mind, and she was sure n.o.body would like her when there were so many girls who had remembered that they would need their complexions for the evening! Still, here she was, and she had wanted to come at any cost, and it was probably going to be one of the spectacles of her young life. She would go and have as good a time as she could, and not mind too much that she was a different kind of spectacle all by herself, a sort of little geranium-face in the midst of lilies.

She bathed her face and applied a bit of every kind of lotion, for each of her friends generously thrust theirs upon her in a well-meaning endeavor to discount the too marked effect of the sun.

"I'll be just sticky when I'm through," she sighed, complying humbly with all their well-meant suggestions. Her face shone a triumphant crimson through the results of all their ministrations, however, and she realized that not even powder would do much to mitigate a color as flamboyant as that. To make it worse, it was beginning to peel in funny little rough wrinkles, as a sensitive skin will after such an exposure to sun as she had given hers. So the powder just looked crumbly when it was applied and she turned her eyes away from the mirror with a cowardly determination not to glance that way again. But how can one do one's hair in a brand new style and twine a tiny wreath therein without looking, not once, but many times at one's reflection? But each time the sight that met her disillusioned eyes was a reproach.

She was doing her beautiful gold-tinted hair into a twist instead of leaving it as she usually wore it in curls. Most of the Andrews girls had done their hair after this new fashion throughout the winter and early spring, but Peggy was younger than most of them and she had worn hers down her back until to-night.

"Of course," she mused aloud, "there isn't so very much use my taking any pains with it at all, since I'm to imitate a scarecrow throughout the evening. But then, I had decided to do my hair this way before I knew the awful destiny that was in store for me, and I have already paid two good dollars for the little wreath to go in it, so I guess I'd better fight it out on this line if it takes all summer. Florence, will you please stick a hair pin in here for me? I seem to need three hands right now and I have only two clumsy ones. Do you think I'll do? Oh, I know my face isn't possible, but otherwise I'm all right, am I?"

And she burst out laughing at the idea of a girl who was all right but her face thinking of going to a party at all and having a good time.

"But I must remember," she told herself, "that I had a good time getting that sunburn, and it isn't as if I hadn't already been paid by happiness for its awfulness."

The pink dress didn't look as pretty as it had when she had tried it on before her mirror at Andrews, because pink never did go so very well with that odd shade of flaming red that Peggy's face showed. There was a bright and distinct line, too, around her neck, all red above the line and all white below, where her collar had protected the skin. She tied a strip of black velvet around this tell-tale mark, humming the while, for it seemed that she might as well be cheerful over this, one of the worst disasters that had ever happened to her.

"They'll see this black ribbon and just think I've tied it too tight,"

she explained to her friends hopefully, "and that it's choking me, making my face so red."

Katherine and Florence failed to see the advantage of having them think this, but they kind-heartedly refrained from saying so, and let Peggy take what comfort she could out of so plausible a belief.

In her heart of hearts, perhaps, Peggy was remembering the occasion when she had dressed so carefully for the matinee that she didn't get to the matinee at all, and was deciding that being on hand was really more important than making a good appearance.

She went to the hop, her spirits as light as her dancing feet, and when Harold Wilbering came eagerly over to her, she and he laughed at what had happened to her face, but he discovered what Peggy had not the least idea of for herself, that the sunburn effect was really rather becoming.

It made her so vivid and so alive. It looked merely as if she were blushing all the time, and Harold liked it. And who could help enjoying himself in talking to Peggy that evening, as she became more and more forgetful of her tragedy, and more and more able to give her whole attention to just having a good time? It was rare that so appreciative a young lady came to one of their early hops. The boys were quite accustomed to girls who had been to a great many more dances than they had, and who sometimes made them feel just a little young. But Peggy so doted on it all, was so carried away by the Marine band, so ready to laugh at their simplest and most time-worn jokes, so wonderingly surprised and navely gratified at their own open admiration of her, that she took like wildfire, and half the academy was talking about that little Parsons girl for a week thereafter.

Peggy went back with the girls to their rooms, her laughter just bubbling at her lips and her sense of satisfaction perfect.

She took down her hair chattering all the time, and when at last the three turned out the light and crept into bed,-for Katherine and she and Florence shared one room, Florence sleeping on the couch and Peggy and Katherine in the big bed, she whispered blissfully into the darkness, "Oh, hasn't this been a most _dazzling_ day! I don't know when I've had such a lovely, lovely time. I don't someway think it's just little Peggy Parsons with a red face that went through all that beautifulness, but instead I feel as if I'd been a fairy princess-the change that Cinderella experienced and all that-and, oh, how I do hate to wake up in the morning and realize that my coach and four has turned into pumpkin!"

"You looked nice in spite of your face, Peggy," said Florence. "And, someway, everybody did seem to take an awful shine to you."

And then Florence's talk drifted off to the partners she had had, and what each one had looked like and what they said. And whenever she paused for breath Katherine interrupted with the story of her adventures and in the midst of their dialogue the fairy princess and Cinderella and little tired red-faced Peggy Parsons, all rolled into one, went off to sleep and dreamed the enchanted dreams of youth.

CHAPTER XIV-WATER-SPRITES

There is something about the first days of spring that stirs that most primitive instinct in every human being-the desire to move on, the nomadic impulse, the explorer sense.

Even the girls at Andrews, with heads full of friendships, coming examinations and summer plans, felt this world-old impulse. School was too small. The roads and fields that they knew so well, sweet with apple blossoms as they were, were all too tame and familiar to satisfy this longing that had made itself apparent by the time the engrossing subject of Annapolis was out of the way.

The girls yawned rudely in cla.s.ses, no matter what sharp words were spoken to correct them. They even stretched their young arms out side-ways and rested them on the next chairs. They turned wistful eyes away from their books out toward the sunlight-sprinkled world and wondered what was in it beyond those immediate roofs and trees that they could see.

Finally Peggy could stand it no longer. "Well, girls," she announced one bright Sat.u.r.day afternoon when there was no more school work to consider for the day, "we're all going hunting for the source of something-we're going exploring. Anybody know a nice, twisty river that we can take for the work? One without too many crabs in it, because, of course, we may want to wade."

The girls were full of enthusiasm at once. Their first thought, as usual, was what they were to take to eat. Several voted for fudge, but Peggy scornfully reminded them that this was an unheard of diet for explorers, and besides she expected to be ravenous by the time they'd walked a few miles. So a more comprehensive luncheon was planned, without the bacon this time, for they did not want to build fires, and a small, bright, quickly-running stream was decided upon for the object of their exploration. To reach this it was necessary that they take a suburban car and ride quite a distance into unfamiliar country, which was just what they had wished. Not those same old roads that they had walked to powder, not those same old rivers on the side of which every cla.s.s had made its fires since the opening of the school, but a brand new part of the country where foot of Andrews girl had never trod before, to their knowledge,-this was ideal, and it added considerably to their delight that Mrs. Forest had given permission for their cla.s.s to go without taking a teacher along.