But it was not an agreeable meal in more ways than one. Peg was not at all careful of anybody’s feelings. She hurt Felix’s cruelly as she passed him his cup of tea.
“You’ve gone too much to flesh, boy. So the magic seed didn’t work, hey?”
How in the world had Peg found out about that magic seed? Felix looked uncommonly foolish.
“If you’d come to me in the first place I’d soon have told you how to get thin,” said Peg, nodding wisely.
“Won’t you tell me now?” asked Felix eagerly, his desire to melt his too solid flesh overcoming his dread and shame.
“No, I don’t like being second fiddle,” answered Peg with a crafty smile. “Sara, you’re too scrawny and pale--not much like your ma. I knew her well. She was counted a beauty, but she made no great things of a match. Your father had some money but he was a tramp like meself. Where is he now?”
“In Rome,” said the Story Girl rather shortly.
“People thought your ma was crazy when she took him. But she’d a right to please herself. Folks is too ready to call other folks crazy. There’s people who say I’M not in my right mind. Did yez ever”--Peg fixed Felicity with a piercing glance--“hear anything so ridiculous?”
“Never,” said Felicity, white to the lips.
“I wish everybody was as sane as I am,” said Peg scornfully. Then she looked poor Felicity over critically. “You’re good-looking but proud. And your complexion won’t wear. It’ll be like your ma’s yet--too much red in it.”
“Well, that’s better than being the colour of mud,” muttered Peter, who wasn’t going to hear his lady traduced, even by a witch. All the thanks he got was a furious look from Felicity, but Peg had not heard him and now she turned her attention to Cecily.
“You look delicate. I daresay you’ll never live to grow up.”
Cecily’s lip trembled and Dan’s face turned crimson.
“Shut up,” he said to Peg. “You’ve no business to say such things to people.”
I think my jaw dropped. I know Peter’s and Felix’s did. Felicity broke in wildly.
“Oh, don’t mind him, Miss Bowen. He’s got SUCH a temper--that’s just the way he talks to us all at home. PLEASE excuse him.”
“Bless you, I don’t mind him,” said Peg, from whom the unexpected seemed to be the thing to expect. “I like a lad of spurrit. And so your father run away, did he, Peter? He used to be a beau of mine--he seen me home three times from singing school when we was young. Some folks said he did it for a dare. There’s such a lot of jealousy in the world, ain’t there? Do you know where he is now?”