THAT LITTLE SMITH GIRL

“Miss Pelham!  Miss Margaret Pelham!”

WALLULA CLAPPED HER HANDS WITH DELIGHT

A VERY PRETTY PAIR

SIBYL’S REFLECTIONS

A TALL, HANDSOME WOMAN SMILED A GREETING

SHE WAS ADDRESSING MONSIEUR BAUDOUIN

THE PRETTY LITTLE BASKET OF GREEN AND WHITE PAPER

AS THE FRESH ARRIVALS APPEARED

THAT LITTLE SMITH GIRL.

CHAPTER I.

“The Pelhams are coming next month.”

“Who are the Pelhams?”

Miss Agnes Brendon gave a little upward lift to her small pert nose as she exclaimed: 

“Tilly Morris, you don’t mean to say that you don’t know who the Pelhams are?”

Tilly, thus addressed, lifted up her nose as she replied,—­

“I do mean to say just that.”

“Why, where have you lived?” was the next wondering question.

“In the wilds of New York City,” answered Tilly, sarcastically.

“Where the sacred stiffies of Boston are unknown,” cried Dora Robson, with a laugh.

“But the Pelhams,—­I thought that everybody knew of the Pelhams at least,” Agnes remarked, with a glance at Tilly that plainly expressed a doubt of her denial.  Tilly caught the glance, and, still further irritated, cried impulsively,—­

“Well, I never heard of them!  Why should I?  What have they done, pray tell, that everybody should know of them?”

“‘Done’?  I don’t know as they’ve done anything.  It’s what they are.  They are very rich and aristocratic people.  Why, the Pelhams belong to one of the oldest families of Boston.”

“What do I care for that?” said Tilly, tipping her head backward until it bumped against the wall of the house with a sounding bang, whereat Dora Robson gave a little giggle and exclaimed,—­

“Mercy, Tilly, I heard it crack!”

Then another girl giggled,—­it was another of the Robsons,—­Dora’s Cousin Amy; and after the giggle she said saucily,—­

“Tilly’s head is full of cracks already.  I think we’d better call her ‘Crack Brain;’ we’ll put it C.B., for short.”

“You’d better call her L.H.,—­’Level Head,’” a voice—­a boy’s voice—­called out here.

The group of girls looked at one another in startled surprise.  “Who—­what!” Then Dora Robson, glancing over the piazza railing, exclaimed,—­

“It’s Will Wentworth.  He’s in the hammock!  What do you mean, Willie, by hiding up like that, right under our noses, and listening to our secrets?”

“Hiding up?  Well, I like that!  I’d been out here for half an hour or more when you girls came to this end of the piazza.”