the girls see the glory of her new idea, “then we’ll go to his house and ask permission to give him one, and it won’t be charity or anything, and it will be fun for everybody—oh, girls, isn’t that gorgeous?”

“OOoo—oo,” shivered Florence at the thought of really committing herself to such a daring decision. “Ye-es, I think we might do that. But we’d never have the courage to go and invite him.”

“Peggy would,” championed the timid one. “Let’s appoint her a committee of one.”

“Unanimously appointed a committee of one,” shouted the other girls gleefully. “Peggy, how soon will all this be?”

Peggy laughingly flung aside her toasting stick, sprang erect, and tried vainly to smooth back her flying gold-toned hair. “Right—NOW!” she declared triumphantly, “we won’t wait to give it to the trustees first.”

“Good-by, Peggy,” murmured Florence demurely, and the others drew closer together as Peggy actually turned her back on them and went up the slope to Gloomy House.

Surprised at her daring, overwhelmed by the boldness of the thing she had undertaken, they watched Peggy disappear over the top of the river bank.

 CHAPTER IV—THE INSIDE OF GLOOMY HOUSE

Up the long walk to Gloomy House, her feet sinking in the wet leaves that had fallen from the branches overhead, Peggy went slowly, her heart pounding.

She was doing what no one else in town would have dared to do, and as she neared the old house, with its tumbled-down step, she began to wonder if perhaps she was afraid.

“Walk on, walk on,” she whispered to herself, for she knew that if she hesitated for an instant she would run. And how could she go back and face the cooking class if, after all her planning, she was a coward now?

So mechanically she walked on, and at last she found herself really ascending the creaking steps. When she stood on the porch with its leafless and ragged vines flapping in the wind a kind of chill unreality seemed to shut her in. She hurried to ring the bell so that someone—anyone—would come and she would not be alone. The bell was an old fashioned one, and as she rang she heard it jangling emptily through the house. It was certainly a very dismal way for callers to have to announce themselves.

When the unpleasant sound had 

 Prev. P 16/104 next