A Flock of Girls and Boys | Page 4

Whatever her class in life, she was certainly a delicate and honorable young girl; for at the very first, when she found that it was a talk between a party of friends, and they were unconscious of a stranger's near neighborhood, she had done her best to make her presence known to them by various little coughs and ahems, and once or twice by decided movements, and readjustments of her position. As no attention was paid to these demonstrations, she finally concluded that none of the party cared whether they were overheard or not, and so settled herself comfortably back again into her place, and opened her book.
But she could not read much. These talkers were all about her own age, and if they did not care that a stranger was overhearing what they said, she need not trouble herself any more; and it was quite certain she found the talk amusing, for more than once a ripple of merriment would dimple her face, and the laughter would nearly break forth from her lips. Even at the last, when Agnes spoke so scornfully of the little yellow dog, the girl seemed to be more amused than annoyed; and she quite understood Miss Agnes's unfinished sentence, too, and Dora's little device to make it unfinished.
It was then only that she saw that her attempts to inform the party of her near neighborhood had been unsuccessful. She got rather red as this knowledge was forced upon her; then, like Will Wentworth, she burrowed down deeper than ever in the hammock, and gave way to a little burst of laughter, though, unlike Will's, hers was no noisy explosion.
All the time she was watching Will and the girls as they took their way across the lawn; and as soon as they disappeared from her view, she jumped from the hammock, and with the fleetest of fleet footsteps ran into the house. Coming down the long wide hall, she met the very person she was going in search of,--the person that Dora Robson had called "that stuffy old woman;" and trotting after her was the little yellow dog, who had just been washed and brushed until his short hair shone like satin.
"Oh, Pete, Pete, come here!" and Pete at this invitation flew to his young mistress's arms with much demonstration of delight.
"And they called you a vulgar plebeian dog, Pete, just think of that!" cried the girl, as she fondled the little animal.
"Who called him that, Peggy?" asked her companion, in a surprised tone.
"One of those girls at the table by the window. Oh, auntie, I want to tell you about it. I was coming to find you on purpose to tell you. Let's go in here, where we shall be all by ourselves," turning towards a small unoccupied reception-room.
There, cosily ensconced beside her aunt, with the little yellow dog at her feet, the dog's mistress told her story, with various exclamations and interjections of, "Now wasn't it horrid of them?" and "Did you ever know anything so ridiculous?" while auntie listened with great interest, her only comment at the end being,--
"Well, they're not worth minding, Peggy, and I wouldn't act as if I'd heard what they said when you meet them. I wouldn't take any notice of them."
"I? Why, it's they who won't take any notice of me, auntie. I'm like my little dog,--a vulgar plebeian. What would they say, what would they think, if they could hear you call me Peggy?--that's as bad as Pete, isn't it?"
"I'm afraid it is;" and auntie laughed a little as she spoke.
The great summer hotel was not nearly full yet, for it was only the last of June; and as Peggy went down to luncheon, her hand closely clasped in "auntie's," whom should she meet face to face in the rather deserted-looking hall but "those girls"? It was a little embarrassing all round, and they all colored up very rosily as they met.
"I wonder where the boy is?" thought Peggy; "he and that New York girl were nice." She glanced over her shoulder at this thought. There was the boy; and--yes, he was standing at the office desk, carefully examining the hotel register. "He's looking for our names!" flashed into Peggy's mind, "and those girls set him up to it. I wonder what they'll say to 'Mrs. Smith and niece'? I know; they'll say, or the girl they call Agnes will say, 'Smith, of course! I knew they had some such common name as that.'"
Something very like this comment did take place when Master Will, in obedience to Dora Robson's request, brought the information that the people at the corner table were Mrs. Smith and her niece. But if Peggy could only have heard Will flash out upon this comment the further information that very distinguished people