stately displeasure. "O dear!" she sighed. "I'm afraid we've hurt her feelings. Dorothy does hate to be laughed at."

"Then she'd better give up making such speeches," remarked Amy, wiping her eyes. "But to go back to Peggy's new friend--Elaine--"

"Yes, just to think of her slamming the door in Peggy's face," cried Ruth, whose customary gentleness had quite disappeared in resentment over Peggy's snubbing. "If she doesn't want neighbors she needn't have any. I move that we let her alone, just as much as if she lived down town somewhere."

"We didn't tell you, Peggy," Priscilla exclaimed, taking up the tale. "But we found out the sort of girl she was the day you came. We thought it was your hack, you know, and we rushed to grab you the minute you stepped out, and we were all screaming for you to hurry, and when this girl got out we felt cheap enough to go right through the sidewalk."

"Yes, we did," interrupted Amy. "If there had been an open coal-hole handy it would have taken me about five seconds to disappear."

"The way she took it showed the sort of girl she is," insisted Priscilla. "Instead of smiling, or saying that it didn't matter, she acted as if we'd been so many hitching-posts standing in a row. Didn't see us or hear us, either. I knew in a minute that I'd never have any use for her if she lived here a thousand years."

"That's just the way I feel," said Ruth.

"Me, too," exclaimed Amy from the rug, and absent-mindedly she reached for another cinnamon roll.

It was Peggy's turn. "O, girls," she pleaded, in tones of distress. "Let's not be in such a hurry to make up our minds. You see, we've hardly seen anything of her."

"Quite enough," observed Priscilla.

"And things were rather against her both times," continued Peggy, disregarding the interruption. "When we come to know her we may like her awfully well."

A depressing silence implied that no one but Peggy herself thought such a result at all probable.

"And, anyway," concluded Peggy, falling back on the supreme argument, "she hasn't tried living in Friendly Terrace yet. We don't know what that will do for her. Instead of letting her alone, I think we'd better show her what it means to have neighbors of the neighborly kind."

It did not appear that a continuation of the discussion was likely to bring them into agreement. Amy tried changing the subject. "Do you know what this roll reminds me of?" she asked, looking thoughtfully at the fragments in her hand.

No one could imagine.

"The first time I ever tasted one of Peggy's rolls," Amy explained, "it was on a picnic at the Park. It was the time that Ruth fell into the lake, feeding the swans."

"I'd forgotten the rolls, but I remember that picnic," Ruth said. "The picnics this year didn't seem like the real thing," she added disconsolately, "with Peggy gone."

"'Tisn't too late for another," Priscilla cried. "Why not go to-morrow?"

If the quartet had failed to agree on the subject of Peggy's next-door neighbor there was no lack of unanimity as far as the picnic was concerned. In five minutes it was arranged that Ruth was to bring the sandwiches and Amy the fudge, while Peggy had agreed to get up early and make some little sponge cakes.

"You won't mind if I bring Dorothy, will you, girls?" Peggy inquired anxiously. "You see, she really does make a lot of extra work, she's such a mischief, and I don't want to leave too much for mother to do."

It was the general opinion that Dorothy's presence would add to the gaiety of the picnic, and, after completing their plans, the friends parted with looks expressive of cheerful anticipation. But Peggy's bright face clouded over as she glanced a little later toward the next house, and saw, perched upon the top of a step-ladder, a slender, girlish figure, with an indefinable air of dejection and helplessness.

"O dear! I shall be glad when she's lived in the Terrace long enough to be one of us," Peggy thought. "All the trouble is that we don't understand one another. As soon as we're acquainted everything will be all right, and nobody'll have to be left out."