"A belle," she said with her lips near Miss Carrol's ear. "One of the teachers said I couldn't be one."

To her hurt surprise, her companion threw back her head and laughed.

"Oh, is that all?" she said. "Well, that's nothing dangerous. I must run along now, Peggy, child, but all the girls are to meet in the parlor at half-past one for the matinee. We must leave promptly at that time."

Katherine's trunk had not arrived yet, so she planned to go right to the parlor after luncheon and wait there for the party to a.s.semble, as she had no other dress to wear than the blue serge she had on. But Peggy left the table in a flurry of excitement and began to lay out all her prettiest things. A dainty little brown velvet suit, with a chiffon waist, and an adorable hat that came dark against her light curls promised well. She manicured her nails, humming all the while, then she steamed her face and dashed cold water on it till it was all glowing.

She did her hair twice and it didn't suit, so she took it all down and experimented with it again. Her hair curled irregularly, and did not lie sleek and smooth and flatly rippled like the hair of the girls who had theirs marcelled. So she borrowed Katherine's electric iron and with a few swift touches sought to make her own natural, pretty hair look artificially waved.

She used powder for the first time. After rubbing her cheeks with a rough towel to keep the glow, she spread on the powder as thickly as she dared. Her nose was alluringly chalk white when she had finished. It was only talc.u.m powder but enough of it had its effect. The girls of Andrews were not allowed to wear jewelry, except in the evening, unless it were a simple band bracelet or a tiny, inconspicuous gold chain and pendant.

So Peggy closed her jewel case with a snap against the temptation of a long gold snake bracelet with emerald eyes that would have made her feel very much more dressed up.

In the early stages of her dressing she thought she heard someone calling up the stairs, she thought there was an unusual stir of girls clattering down into the hall, but she was too engrossed in the process of becoming beautiful really to sense what might be going on. Once she even thought she heard her name, but she was just applying a precious drop of concentrated violet to the lace at her throat, and though she called out mechanically, "What," she received no answer, and decided she had been mistaken.

At length, complete, she surveyed herself happily. "I guess I look almost as pretty as the actresses, now," she approved. "I'll go down to the parlor-it must be nearly half-past one."

She went down the stairs, with a curious sense of the silence of the house. Why weren't there more girls trooping down with her? She felt a chill of misgiving when she reached the parlor door. No laughter drifted out, no sound of chattering came from within. With a quick fear she opened the door and paused wonderingly on the threshold as a perfectly empty room met her gaze.

She was too late to start with them-perhaps she could catch up yet. She would hurry to the theater and perhaps they had waited for her in the lobby. Panting, she tore across the lawn and boarded the first street-car. It seemed to go so slowly-as if they'd _never_ get there.

She found herself tearing the little lacey handkerchief she had taken from her bag.

There was the theater. She pressed the bell, and, getting off before the car had come fully to a stop, breathless, she entered the building. No group of girls, no Miss Carrol. She looked up wildly at the clock above the ticket seller's window. Four o'clock, it said! Almost time for the show to be over! Oh, how awful, how awful, where had the time gone? What had happened to her? Fighting back the tears at the futility of everything, she approached the ticket window.

"Are-the-Andrews girls in there?" she faltered.

That was a silly question and she knew it. Because, of course, they were in there, this was where they had been coming-and she had, too, for that matter if she could only have gotten here on time. But at the minute she could think of nothing else to say and she was conscious of a vague hope that the ticket-seller would help her, would suggest something. She would gladly buy her own ticket and get in if only she could get to their box afterward. But she didn't know which one it was, and she didn't know how to manage it, anyway.

"I don't know if they are," the ticket-seller was replying, casually.

"How should I know?"

Peggy turned dejectedly away from the window. This was more than she could stand. Never in her life had she felt so little and so helpless and so-yes, so homesick. She couldn't go back to the school and have to face possible questions. She would stay downtown somewhere until it was time for the matinee to be over and then she would return about the same time the others did.

She drifted out into the waning sunlight of the street, and looked hopelessly about her. Next the theater was the public library. This looked like a refuge and she went in and walked despondently over to the librarian's desk.

"Please find me something to read-about-about girls having a party," she choked.

When she was back at school, in her own room, clad once more in the loved blue silk kimono, the ordeal of dinner and curious questions over, Katherine, her room-mate, looked up from her algebra book and said suddenly,

"Oh, Peggy, we missed you so."

"Did you?" cried Peggy wistfully. "Well, I've decided something. I don't care a bit about being a belle. I'd rather get to places on time, and feel like myself,-and be just Peggy Parsons, after all."

CHAPTER III-A BACON BAT

An eventful day for Peggy came after two weeks of school. In it began a curious series of happenings that added flavor to her whole school life, and gave her, finally, the power to be, as her room-mate laughingly said, "sort of magic."

And all this came about through so prosaic a thing as bacon. The domestic science cla.s.s, well under way with an excellent teacher, decided to have a "bacon bat," after the custom of the Smith College girls, all by themselves on some bit of rock that jutted into the river.

Peggy had helped Katherine do the shopping for the treat,-Katherine had been at Andrews for two years now, and knew just how it was done. Then the seven girls of the cla.s.s started off, each with a paper bag in her hand, for the method of conveying the supplies to the picnic grounds was always very informal for a bacon bat. There were no little woven picnic baskets to hang picturesquely over their arms, there were no daintily packed little shoe-boxes of sandwiches. There was just the jar of bacon strips in a paper bag, the bottle of olives in another paper bag, and the two dozen rolls, a generous supply, in the biggest paper bag of all.

These were the simple requisites for a bacon bat, and even the olives were not necessary, Katherine termed them useless frills. There was a tiny box of matches, too, that Peggy slipped into the pocket of her red jacket. It has happened that a merry group of girls has gone on a bacon bat with everything but the matches, and then unless they were Camp Fire girls and knew how to coax fire out of two dry sticks they met a terrible disappointment, when, their appet.i.tes all worked up for the occasion, they found they couldn't cook the party after all.

If you were on good terms with the grocer, he kept a box of matches-the old fashioned kind-under the counter and offered you a dozen or so, loose, when you bought your bacon. But Peggy had wanted to buy a little box, insisting that if she had to start the fire a dozen might not be enough.

"Where are we going to have it?" Peggy thought to ask as they strolled, laughing, along the road away from the school.

"On the River Bank near Gloomy House," cried three girls at once, "that's the ideal spot."

"Near-what?" asked Peggy in concern. It didn't sound very picnicky to her.

"Right there, ahead," said Katherine, pointing, "right through those grounds, and down to the water-because, of course, we can hardly have our fire except on some sort of little stone island-with water enough to put it out if it got rambunctious."

The girls were turning now over the long, dank gra.s.s, and making their way in the direction of a great empty-looking ramshackle old house with sagging porches and dull windows.

"n.o.body lives there, do they?" Peggy asked.

"Oh,-sh-yes!"

The girls tiptoed over the gra.s.s, skirting the lawn in order to keep as far away from Gloomy House as possible. Peggy was not yet familiar with the traditions of the town in which Andrews was situated. It seemed strange to her that after the girls had chosen this place with such unanimous enthusiasm they should a.s.sume such an air of discomfort and mystery now that they had come. She studied the old house, dignified even in its decay, with its trailing, rasping vines blowing against the pillars of the porch, and its sunken, uneven steps, and then quite unaccountably she shivered and hurried past it as fast as the other girls.

"I don't want to come here for a picnic," she panted, "if it's all so queer. Why didn't we choose some nice sunny place with a little stream to drink out of, and one big tree for shade? It's so dark and overgrown, as we get through here, that it seems more like an exploring expedition than a regular picnic to me."

"Oh," cried Florence Thomas, the best cook in the domestic science cla.s.s, "we can fry bacon down on those rocks in the river, and there is a grape-vine swing on the bank that goes sailing way out over the water with you. Why, there just isn't any other place so nice for a picnic-here you always feel as if you might have adventures."

"Adventures, at a picnic, usually mean cows or snakes," sighed Peggy, "I hope we don't have any."

The girls clambered down the steep slope to the water, and Florence and Dorothy Trowbridge began at once to gather twigs and branches.

"How are we going to cook this bacon?" asked Peggy suddenly, "when we get our fire? n.o.body brought a frying pan."

"Frying pan!" echoed Florence over an armful of nice dry chips and twigs. "We get sticks."

Peggy saw that each girl was breaking a branch from a near-by tree, testing it to see that it was not "too floppy," as Katherine put it, and would be green enough not to catch fire easily. Peggy found a delightful little branch, and began stripping the end, as she saw the others do.

The fire was by this time crackling and it was a temptation to begin right away, for the walk had made them hungry-or, perhaps, they hadn't needed the walk: healthy girls like healthy boys are always hungry. But Florence reminded them that their bacon would simply be burned to a crisp if they thrust it in the flames now, so they waited a few minutes, reluctantly enough, until the red and blue sparks sputtered down to a steady glow, hotter and hotter at the heart of the fire. Then the girls each pierced a piece of bacon with their pointed stick and held it gloatingly into the red glow. Peggy enthusiastically opened rolls, so that the crisp hot slices might go sizzling into place as soon as they were taken from the fire, and the roll might be clapped together upon them.

"Isn't this comfy?" asked Florence, munching her first fiery sandwich.

"If the rain and wind had never come, I suppose you could find the ashes, on this flat rock, left by every cla.s.s that ever went to Andrews.

Ouch!-Mercy!-Peggy, what did you let me bite that for, when the end was still burning?"

Peggy laughingly dipped up a cupful of water from the river and pa.s.sed it to poor Florence, who was trying to wink back the tears from her eyes.

"If you drink that now you'll smoke," she warned delightedly. "Girls, girls,-fire!"

"I-don't-care-" gulped Florence, waving the rest of her roll and bacon through the air to cool it. "Hot as that was, I guess old Mr. Huntington of Gloomy House, up there, would be glad to have it. If he can smell the smoke of this little feast-with that lovely amber coffee Dorothy is making-I guess he wishes he was a girl and could come down and get some.