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nned broadly. "If you can make 'em run," he replied, "by licking 'em or scaring 'em or anything else, I'll see you get a medal. Why, Bess here is twenty-three years old." He struck the animal a resounding smack upon the flank which demonstration caused Bess to prick one ear reflectively. "Her frisky days are over," continued Joe, "and Nat ain't much better. A baby in arms could drive 'em." In spite of such encouraging assurances, Peggy did not feel at all certain of her ability to manage the double team on hilly country roads. Priscilla's father kept a horse, it was true, but he was a rather spirited animal, and neither Priscilla nor her mother ever attempted to drive him. "They'll all insist on my driving," thought Peggy, as she turned her face toward Dolittle Cottage. "And what if I should drive into a gully and spill them out? I've half a mind to go back and see if Mr. Cole can possibly spare Joe." But before Peggy had time to retrace her steps, a somewhat familiar figure came into view at the turn of the road, a girl in a sunbonnet, with a tin pail in either hand. Peggy hurried forward to greet her, rejoicing in a possible solution of her problem. "Oh, good afternoon. Do you know how to drive?" Lucy Haines looked as surprised as if she had been questioned as to her ability to button her own shoes. "Why, of course," she answered staring. "I thought so. Then don't you want to go on a picnic with us to-morrow and drive the horses? Joe says a baby could manage them, but I don't feel equal to it, and I'm sure the other girls won't. If you'll come," added Peggy with sudden inspiration, "we'll have a berry-picking bee, and all fall to and help you, to make up for your squandering a day on us." "Oh, you wouldn't have to do that," protested Lucy; "I'd love to go if I could really help you." With all her powers of intuition, Peggy was far from guessing what her impulsive invitation meant to this ambitious girl whose life had been pathetically bare of pleasure. The girls of Dolittle Cottage would have been vastly surprised had they known how carefree and opulent they seemed to Lucy, whose rapt absorption in the task of realizing her ambition involved the danger that she would forget how to enjoy herself. Had Peggy's invitation come in any other way, the chances are that Lucy would have declined it, her sensitive pride rendering her suspicious of kindnesses uncalled-for, from her point of view. It was quite ano
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