ing_--_to give in_! If you
stick to me, we can still manage to get the calendar off in time. There
are twenty more quotations to be found. I'll sit up to-night and fix
them off, and go on writing as long as I can keep awake, but I can't
take a dozen books up to town with me, so I must leave it to you to
finish up. I'll mark the passages I choose, write the full address on a
piece of paper, and leave everything ready for you to make up the
parcel. All you will have to do will be to write the remaining cards,
and to see that it is sent off on Friday. Five o'clock will be time
enough, but if you can get it off in the morning, so much the better.
You think you can manage as much as that?"

"Oh yes! I'd do anything rather than give up now. It would be too
grudging. I am not afraid of a little more work."

"You have done more than your share already. I am mad about it, but it
can't be helped. I couldn't refuse to go with the mater, and I wouldn't
if I could. She is really not at all strong, and does not like the life
down here. It will do her good to have a few days' change."

Peggy looked at him steadily. She did not speak, but her eyes grew soft
and shining, and there was something at once so sweet, so kindly, and so
gentle in her expression that Rob exclaimed in surprise--

"I say, Peggy, you--you do look pretty! I never saw you look like that
before--what have you been doing to yourself?"

"Doing!" Peggy straightened herself at that, in offended dignity.
"Doing, indeed! What do you mean? Don't you think I am pretty as a
rule?"

"Never thought about it," returned Robert carelessly. "You are Peggy--
that's enough for me. A nice state I should be in to-day if it were not
for you! You are the jolliest little brick I ever met, and if I get
this prize it will be far more your doing than my own."

Well, that was good hearing! Peggy held her head high for the rest of
that evening, and felt as if nothing would have power to depress her for
the future. But, alas, when the pendulum is at its highest it begins to
swing downwards. Peggy's heart sank as she watched Robert drive away
from the door the next morning, and it went on sinking more and more
during the next twenty-four hours, as she realised the responsibility
which weighed upon her shoulders. When she came down to breakfast on
Friday morning the calendar was finished and ready to be made up for the
post, but her head was splitting with pain as