The Girls of Friendly Terrace

The naming of the Terrace was a happy accident. It must have been an accident, for Jenkins Avenue crossed it at right angles, and just to the north ran Sixtieth Street. No one could have guessed when the Terrace was laid out that the name would prove so appropriate, and that the comfortable cottages would have such a cordial, neighborly look, as if nodding greetings to one another across their neat strips of lawn.

When the name Friendly Terrace appeared on the street lamps at the corner there were no smiling faces visible at the front windows of the houses, no plump babies rolling over the lawns, no girls gathering on one another's porches, like robins in the boughs of a cherry tree, or strolling along the sidewalk, two by two, with their arms about each other's waists. The naming of the Terrace must have been a happy accident, or else an inspiration.

There was usually a girl in evidence on Friendly Terrace at any hour of the day, and this morning there were three of them. They ranged from tall Priscilla, who was five feet seven, and mortally afraid of growing taller, down to Amy, who was almost as broad as she was long, and who was in a chronic state of announcing her determination to leave off eating candy next week. Ruth, who on this occasion served as the connecting link between the two extremes, was a slender girl, whose alert air told plainly that she was on the watch for something or somebody.

"Once when my Aunt Fanny was coming to make us a visit," Amy observed reminiscently, "her train was six hours late. Just think if Peggy's train--"

"Don't!" exclaimed Priscilla rather fretfully, and Ruth said with decision, "O Peggy's train couldn't be late, she's coming such a tiny bit of a way."

"It might be if there was a wreck," Amy insisted triumphantly. "That was the matter when Aunt Fanny came. A freight train was wrecked just ahead of them, and they had to stand on the track for hours and hours. We waited luncheon for her till I was almost starved."

The other girls exchanged amused smiles. The thought of Amy, undergoing the pangs of starvation, was likely to present itself in a humorous light. Amy saw the look and understood it, but was far from being offended. In point of disposition, Amy was as sweet as the confections she was always on the point of denying herself. An appreciative giggle showed that she understood her friends' point of view.

"That's always the way," she said, with unimpaired cheerfulness. "Fat people never get any sympathy." She stopped abruptly, for Ruth had uttered a stifled scream and was pinching her arm.

"The hack!" cried Ruth. "The hack's coming. Peggy's here."

The non-committal vehicle, rapidly approaching from the direction of the Avenue, was mud-stained and shabby, but the appearance of Cinderella's golden coach would hardly have been the occasion for greater excitement. Ruth clasped her hands, her color coming and going. Tall Priscilla forgot her dignity and capered like a five year old, while Amy went tripping down the street to meet the hack, which, of course, passed her, reducing her to the necessity of following in pursuit, panting and very red in the face. All along the Terrace people came to the windows at the sound of wheels, for from the mothers down to the babies, everyone knew that Peggy Raymond was coming home that morning. Even Taffy, Peggy's dog, bounded out to add his mite to the general welcome.

"Talk of the intelligence of animals," gasped Priscilla, as Taffy shot between Ruth and herself, narrowly avoiding upsetting both. "That dog knows it's Peggy just as well as we do. O why don't the man stop in the right place?"

The mud-splashed vehicle came to a standstill midway between Peggy's home and the vacant cottage next door. Before it had fairly halted the girls were abreast of it.

"Here we are, honey!"

"Hurry up! We're dying for a sight of you."

"O, don't be such a slow-poke. Even Taffy is losing patience." This last comment was unnecessary, as Taffy was speaking for himself, barking uproariously, and leaping about with an air of the keenest anticipation.

The door of the hack opened, and very deliberately a girl stepped out. She was a tall girl, dressed in black, which added to her apparent slenderness. Her lips, which suggested a degree of self-repression, unusual in a girl of her age, were tightly set. She did not look in the direction of the crestfallen trio ranged along the sidewalk.

"Why!" cried Amy, who had an odd fashion of announcing discoveries which had been apparent to everyone for some time, "It isn't Peggy after all."

"We--you--I mean we thought you were somebody else," explained Priscilla, with considerably less than her usual self-confidence.

The newcomer took as little notice of the stammered apology as she had of her boisterous welcome. Silently she assisted a lady draped in mourning to alight, and together they made their way to the empty cottage, which displayed in the front window the sign, "To Rent." The hack driver grinned, fully appreciating the little comedy, while the girls exchanged glances of mingled wrath and humiliation.

Amy was the first to see the humorous side. She shut her eyes and staggered to the fence for support. Her peals of laughter must have been plainly audible to the girl who was trying the key in the front door of the vacant cottage, but the latter only tightened her lips and did not turn her head. Ruth and Priscilla, after staring blankly at Amy for a moment, joined in her laughter, though in a rather half-hearted fashion.

"She looked so out of temper," gasped Amy breathlessly. "And we'd been calling her 'honey' and telling her we were dying to see her. O dear!" She wiped her eyes, and started on another burst of merriment which almost immediately died away in a gurgle of astonishment.

"Peggy!" Three voices pronounced the name at once, with varied intonations of surprise and pleasure. So engrossed had they been that they had not noticed the arrival of a second hack, which with magical suddenness had spilled out upon the sidewalk a large girl and a small one, to say nothing of a motley collection of suit-cases, hand-bags, bundles and umbrellas. Settling with the hackman delayed Peggy a half-minute, and the girls arrived at the gate as soon as she, but she waved them aside.

"First kiss for mother," Peggy cried, and shot straight as an arrow into the arms of the lady who stood waiting on the steps. There was a long clasp and more kisses than one, and none of Peggy's friends thought the less of her for that loyal rush for the one who loved her best.

It was no wonder that Peggy Raymond's return was an event on Friendly Terrace. She was the sort of girl you could not see without wishing you knew her, and could not know without beginning to love her. From her reddish-brown top-knot down to the tips of her toes she was bubbling over with life and joyous energy. It was a nice world, Peggy thought, full of nice people. Every to-morrow was stored for her with wonderful possibilities, as the yesterdays were full of sweet recollections. Complaining, discontented people wakened in her the same sorrowful wonder she felt when she saw a blind man feeling his uncertain way along the street. Indeed, to Peggy discontent seemed another and more dreadful form of blindness.

"Come into the house, all of you." Peggy was making up for the brief delay by kissing everybody twice around. "Hasn't Dorothy grown, girls? Wouldn't you think she was more than four years old? What are you doing, Dorothy darling?"

"I'm wipin' off kisses," Dorothy replied with great distinctness, scrubbing violently at her rosebud of a mouth. "'Cause I don't like kisses to stick on, 'cept my mamma's."

"She says that because she's forgotten you since last year," Peggy explained excusingly.

"She'll be real friendly after a day or two. O Amy, dear, you mustn't try to lift that heavy suit-case. It weighs as much as you do."

"I'm afraid not. I've gained three pounds since you went away," Amy replied dolefully. "Next week I'm going to stop eating candy, and begin to walk ten miles a day."

Everybody laughed, for, when hearts are light, old jokes serve as well as new ones. They streamed into the house, a laden procession, and piled Peggy's belongings in the middle of the living-room. Then they pulled her down on the window-seat, chafing under the undeniable difficulty of evenly dividing one girl among three.

"I'm so glad to see you, I could just eat you up," Amy declared, seating herself on Peggy's knee, as each of the others had preempted a side. "And to think of your staying six weeks, when you said you'd only be gone a month."

"I hated to leave Alice," Peggy's face clouded for a moment, as she spoke her sister's name. "She isn't a bit well. You know we are going to keep Dorothy with us for a while. She's so full of life that she's a tax on her mother."

"I stood on a tacks once," observed Dorothy, suddenly becoming interested. "It sticked into me, and I hollered." She frowned meditatively as she added, "I don't like you to call me a tacks, either."

"It's another kind, darling. O girls, you don't know how good it seems to get back to the Terrace, where people know each other and are real neighbors. I don't see how Alice stands it."

"Is it so bad living in a very big city?" Priscilla asked, rather doubtfully. "I believe I'd love it. I like crowds and noise and something happening every moment."

Peggy shook her head with decision. "Just wait till I tell you. Alice lives in a flat, and there's only one woman in the building whom she'd know if she met her on the street. One morning while I was there we heard the greatest commotion in the flat just over ours. Somebody screamed, and then we could hear somebody else hurrying around right over our heads, and then there was the sound of dreadful crying. The windows were open, you know, and we heard everything as plainly as you hear me."

"Well, what had happened?" Amy demanded, as Peggy paused dramatically.

"That's what we couldn't imagine. I wanted to rush right up first thing, but Alice said people didn't do that way in big cities, and that she didn't know the woman at all, though she thought the name on the letter box was Flemming. Well, the crying kept up till I couldn't stand it any longer. I just walked upstairs and knocked, and when the girl came to the door, I said I lived on the next floor and I was afraid that somebody was in trouble and could I do anything to help.

"O girls!" Peggy's voice grew pensive at the remembrance of that sorrowful scene. "I never imagined anything so dreadful. The poor woman--her name was Fletcher instead of Flemming--had just had word that her little boy had been hurt by an automobile, and taken to a hospital. And she was so upset that she didn't know how to get ready to go to him, and the girl was so stupid that she didn't know how to help her. And I rushed around and found her hat and coat and put on her shoes for her--she was wearing slippers--and did everything, just as if I'd known her all my life. And then she wouldn't let me go, and I went along with her to the hospital. She told me afterward that she had only lived in the city a few years and hadn't made many friends. A few years!" repeated Peggy with fine scorn.

"Why, if anybody on this Terrace was in trouble, even if she hadn't lived here more than six weeks, we'd all be flocking in to see what we could do for her."

"Did the boy die?" asked Amy, missing the moral Peggy was trying to point, in her interest in the story.

"No, indeed. He wasn't hurt as badly as they thought at first. He was home again before I left, such a nice boy, not far from Dick's age. O here's Dick now."

Peggy's younger brother, Dick Raymond, coming in at that moment, said, "Hello, Peggy," in the most matter-of-fact manner imaginable and submitted with apparent resignation to his sister's kiss. But no one was deceived. Dick's admiration of Peggy was an open secret in Friendly Terrace. The boy was hot and perspiring. He had run all the way home from his music teacher's, so impatient was he for a glimpse of the dearest as well as the most remarkable girl in the world, as he firmly believed, and yet at the sight of her, he had only a "hello Peggy," and a shame-faced kiss. Luckily Peggy was not the sort of girl who needed to be told certain things. She understood without any explanation.

"Guess we're going to have some new neighbors," Dick observed, looking out of the window, apparently glad of an opportunity to change the topic of the conversation.

"Who? Where? The next house?" Peggy stood looking over her brother's shoulder, as two people came from the vacant cottage and moved toward the waiting hack. Her eyes dwelt approvingly on the slender figure of a black-gowned girl, carefully assisting the older lady into the carriage.

"Girls!" Peggy's voice fairly tinkled, as she made the pleasant announcement. "It looks as if we might be going to have another girl on the Terrace. Won't that be fine?"

The others exchanged dubious glances. "Always room for one more, I suppose," Priscilla said at last.

"And she looks like such a sweet girl, too," Peggy continued, as the shabby hack rumbled off. "She had such a nice way of helping her mother--that is, I suppose it's her mother."

Amy coughed in an embarrassed fashion, and Ruth said hastily, "We took her for you at first, Peggy. We were watching for your hack, you know, and hers came first."

"I imagine she must have thought us very cordial to strangers," Priscilla added, choking down a laugh, as she remembered the contemptuous indifference of the girl who had received a welcome intended for somebody else.

"I'm glad of that," said the innocent Peggy. "Because that may help them in making up their minds to come here. And I don't like to have a vacant house on the Terrace. It reminds me of a child shedding its first teeth. The more smiling and pleasant it looks, the more you notice that something is missing."

From across the street somebody whistled, a rather peculiar whistle, long and piercing. Ruth jumped to her feet.

"It's Graham," she said. "What is he doing home at this time in the morning? O, I wonder if luncheon really can be ready?"

"Of course it can," Amy cried tragically. "I'm nearly starved. I couldn't eat any breakfast this morning, I was so excited because Peggy was coming."

"You'll be over this afternoon, won't you, Peggy?" Priscilla asked as she rose to go, and her face fell slightly as Peggy answered, "Why, of course. I'll run in to see all of you." It was just a little hard for Priscilla to remember that her claim on Peggy was in no sense superior to that of the other girls. She was one of the people who liked to be first, and, though generous enough with her other possessions, she found it hard to share her friend. Yet there were moments when Priscilla acknowledged to herself that a fraction of Peggy's affection was worth more than the undivided devotion other girls had given her in the fervid friendships which, in a few weeks or months at the outside, had burned themselves out.

Peggy was as good as her word. But when she crossed the street that afternoon, on her way to Priscilla's, she noticed that the sign "To Rent" had disappeared from the window of the house next door. "That means new neighbors, certain sure," thought Peggy hopefully. Nor did she guess what a new element her prospective neighbors were to introduce into the cheerful atmosphere of Friendly Terrace.