"She wouldn't recognize them, anyhow; she is so near-sighted that even that gold lorgnette wouldn't discover her own stitches. Well, good-by, girls. I'm going."
Unknown to her cousins, Peggy slipped away with the rhyming dictionary under her arm. She had discovered it on the table, and the opportunity was too good to be wasted.
She crossed the street to her own home and retired to her own room, from which she did not emerge for an hour or more. At dinner that night her family, had they looked at her with attention, might have discovered an additional expression of mischief in her eyes and a satisfied look on her face. But fortunately one's family are not apt to notice.
"If I thought there was the least chance of Cousin Appolina choosing me to go abroad, I might not run the risk," she said to herself; "but she wouldn't take me on any account. Besides, she'll never hear of this, and it will be such fun to paralyze Milly. Just fancy her taking me in earnest, and sending her poems to the fair! Oh, oh! What a dear old innocent she is! It is a shame to tease her, but I just can't help it. Pearl Proctor! Pearl Proctor! what naughty deed is about to be perpetrated in thy name!"
AUTHOR OF "DORYMATES," "CAMPMATES," "RAFTMATES," "CANOEMATES," ETC.
f course, Mr. Coombs, you can't expect us to go back to St. Michaels now," began Phil, as a preliminary to unfolding his scheme for the discomfiture of Simon Goldollar and his unprincipled companion.
"Why not?" demanded the sailor, who had not for a moment expected anything else. "As soon as I found ye I were to bring ye to St. Michaels, and keep ye there till your father comes. Them's orders, and to disobey 'em would be mutiny, nigh as I kin make out."
"That would be all right if you had found us; but you haven't."
"Eh?" queried Jalap Coombs. "I hain't found ye?"
"Certainly not," laughed Phil. "Instead of you finding us, we have found you. If you had struck us at Anvik, it is possible that we might have gone back with you, but as we have found you some four hundred miles from there, we shall certainly do nothing of the kind. You see, to begin with, we are under the greatest of obligations to Captain Hamer, who, by-the-way, is one of the finest men I ever met."