The next day was a happy one for Margaret and Virginia.
“Please give me some tasks to do that shall be my very own,” the newcomer pleaded when breakfast was over. Malcolm, true to his word, had long since departed.
“Oh, let’s just do everything together,” Virginia replied. “That’s more sociable. First, we will make the beds. I’ll spread one side and you the other, and while we’re doing them, let’s chatter like magpies. There are dozens of things I want to know about you. First, is this Babs about whom you tell, your very best friend?”
“Yes indeed. Her full name is Barbara Blair Wente, and, Virg, I do believe that you could put her in a thimble, most, and not have a single one of her sunny hairs show over the top, she’s that tiny. She has a brother, but she seldom mentions him. There is something very sad about him, but I don’t understand what exactly. Once, when I went to our room unexpectedly (that is, Babs thought I was in class, and I was, only I went back for a book), I found her crying as though her heart would break. In one hand she held a crumpled letter and in the other a picture of such a good-looking boy. Of course I begged her to tell me, that is, if I could help, but she said she just couldn’t tell the whole story. However, I gathered from fragments that her brother, Peyton, who is three years older than she, had displeased their rather stern father and had disappeared, no one knew where. ‘I love him so, Megsy,’ Babs sobbed, ‘much more than I do anyone on the whole earth now that mother is gone.’
“Just then a maid came to straighten our room, and never again could I get Babs to talk about her brother. ‘It hurts too much,’ she would tell me.
“The next day before I came away I asked: ‘Babsy, have you heard from Peyton yet?’ Tears rushed to her eyes and she shook her head. ‘No,’ she replied, ‘he thinks he has disgraced us all and he will never write, even to me.’”
“Poor girl,” Virginia said, with true sympathy as she led the way to Malcolm’s room. “I know how I would feel if my brother suddenly disappeared and I didn’t know where he was. I don’t believe I could stand it. In fact, I am sure I couldn’t. Did you ever see Peyton?”
“No, I didn’t,” Margaret replied, “but I am pretty sure that I have a snapshot of Babs that was taken years ago with her brother. When I unpack my trunk, I’ll look for it.”
“I wonder if Peyton came west. So many boys do when they run away,” Virginia said as she smoothed the top spread on Malcolm’s bed and placed the pillows at just the right angle.
“Babs thinks he went to sea,” Margaret told her. “Not that she has any reason for so thinking, but he was always wild about water, ever since the days when he sailed chip-vessels on a brook, Babs said.”
“Then that’s probably where he has gone. Poor, poor girl, my heart aches for her.”
Then, catching Margaret’s hand, Virginia added: “Megsy, you would just love to have our friend visit you out here some time, wouldn’t you? Please tell her, when you write, that she will be most welcome whenever she wishes to come.”
“Oh, Virginia, thank you!” Margaret hugged the taller girl. “I believe Babs would come some day. She has an income of her own. You would just love her, I know.”
Then, when the older girl departed kitchenward, leaving her new friend to dust the living-room, Margaret fell to happily dreaming of the day, which she hoped would soon materialize, when her beloved Babs would be a visitor on the V. M. Ranch.