still open, and as Peggy stood upon the steps she heard the sharp tinkle of broken glass.

"There's something gone to smash. Dear me, what a time they're having," thought Peggy, wishing her acquaintance with the new arrivals was sufficiently advanced so that she could offer to lend her aid, for her capable fingers fairly itched to assist in bringing order out of the chaos within. She knocked, and, after waiting for some minutes, knocked again, this time a little louder.

"Elaine!" a voice cried. "Elaine! Somebody's at the back door."

"O dear!" someone else said distinctly, and Peggy's color heightened, even though she felt confident that the speaker's mood would change as soon as she knew her caller's errand. "So her name is Elaine," Peggy thought, as footsteps slow, and seemingly reluctant, sounded on the bare floors. "Such a pretty name."

The door opened violently and a girl looked out. It was the same black-gowned girl Peggy had watched from her window a few days earlier, but, on this occasion, her appearance was decidedly less prepossessing. Apparently she had neglected to comb her hair that morning, or else her forenoon's occupation had been strenuous enough to obliterate all traces of that ceremony. Her apron was soiled. She wore an expression of weary discouragement, which seemed as incongruous with her girlish face as white hair would have done. The eyes she turned upon Peggy were anything but friendly, and yet at the sight of her, Peggy's heart swelled with a sympathy that was almost tender.

"Good morning!" Peggy extended her offering with a cordial smile. "I know how busy you must be getting settled, and I brought you over a plate of rolls. I live--"

"We don't care to buy anything this morning," said the girl, and made a movement as if to close the door. Peggy's face flamed to the roots of her hair.

"O, you don't understand," she cried. "I'm a neighbor of yours. I've brought you over a plate of cinnamon rolls, I've just finished baking. They're not for sale."

Elaine was a rather pale girl. But as Peggy finished her little speech, two spots of red showed in the other's thin cheeks.

"We're not objects of charity, thank you," she said. The door shut with a slam. Peggy, her rejected offering in her hand, stood bewildered on the step. For a moment she battled with the temptation to push open the door and force the girl inside to listen to reason. With a choked laugh, that covered not a little humiliation, she realized the folly of such a proceeding and turned away.

Peggy's eyes were absent as she entered the house. She took the second pan of rolls from the oven without feeling any disposition to gloat over their yellow-brown perfection. Then, remembering her promise to Dick and Dorothy, she put some of the rolls on a plate and carried them into the next room. Her thoughts were still full of the rebuff she had received from her new neighbor, and when she had set the plate of rolls on the table she stood with clasped hands, looking hard at nothing in particular, and frowning over her reflections.

"How glad she is to see us!"

"Yes, just notice her smile."

"Probably those are city manners, girls. We'll have to get used to it."

A volley of mocking laughter followed these observations, and Peggy started guiltily.

"I didn't see you," she apologized, as three girls popped up from the window-seat and approached her.

"Don't try to get out of it, Peggy," teased Priscilla, slipping her arm about Peggy's waist. "You know you can't be glad to see us with such a face."

"O, Peggy! What delicious rolls!" Amy hung over the plate with an ecstatic gasp. "Don't they look as if they'd melt in your mouth."

"Help yourself," Peggy cried. "All of you."

"They'll make you fat, Amy," warned Ruth, extending a slim hand. "Priscilla and I can eat all we want, but you'll have to refuse. You know you're going to leave off eating candy."

"Well, they're not candy, and, besides, I'd rather gain a few ounces than turn down such darlings," Amy replied recklessly. Suiting the action to the word she set her teeth in the golden-brown crust. "They're as good as they look," she announced indistinctly. "Say, Peggy, are these the kind you took over to the house next door? Dick said that was what you went out for."

Peggy nodded, her face betraying the peculiarly guilty expression that sensitive people wear when fearing that they will be forced to betray the wrongdoing of someone else. Priscilla eyed her suspiciously.

"Well, I don't see that there could have been a nicer introduction," Amy remarked with her mouth full. "How lovely it would be if all callers brought cinnamon rolls instead of visiting cards."

"What happened, Peggy?" demanded Priscilla, reading her friend's tell-tale face as if it had been an open book. "Weren't they nice to you?"

"Nice!" cried Ruth, flaring up at the mere suggestion of ill-treating Peggy. "Why shouldn't they be nice?"

"Peggy's blushing," exclaimed Amy, announcing a discovery sufficiently obvious to the least discerning. "She's blushing as red as fire. Peggy Raymond, what has happened?"

"It really wasn't anything," said poor Peggy, fairly cornered. "Only--"

"Well?"

"Only she didn't quite understand."

"Who didn't? That snippy, disagreeable girl, who puts on such ridiculous airs of being better than other people?"

Peggy's eyes widened over the vivid description whose appropriateness she was forced to admit. "I saw the girl," she replied hastily. "Her name's Elaine, I think."

"We don't care about her name, Peggy. What did she do?"

"At first she thought I'd come to sell the rolls, and she said they didn't care to buy anything."

"Peggy a pedler! I never heard anything so funny!" Amy sat down on the floor to laugh, but her amusement did not communicate itself to the others. Ruth's face still wore a protesting frown, and Priscilla's eyes were flashing.

"A pedler!" Priscilla repeated disdainfully. "She must be very observing. Well, Peggy. After you explained--"

"That seemed to make it all the worse," admitted Peggy, finding a little relief, it must be acknowledged, in the sympathy called out by her confession. "She can't have been used to neighbors, that's sure. She said they weren't objects of charity, and shut the door in my face."

An indignant explosion followed, when everybody talked at once. Then Dorothy bobbing up as expectedly as a Jack in a box, poured oil on the troubled waters by offering a suggestion. "Maybe they fought the currants was flies. I did till I bited 'em."

"O, Dorothy, what a killing child you are!" cried Amy, giving way to helpless laughter, and this time she had plenty of company. Peggy was the only one of the quartet who made any effort to conceal her merriment, Peggy having a singular theory that children should be treated just as courteously as older people. She looked regretfully at the small, erect figure marching out of the room with an air of