“Oh,” retorted Agnes, “this all sounds very straight and pretty, but I dare say you’ve got used to telling such stories.  Perhaps you’ll tell us now what name you do call your own, and if it is by that those South American friends you write to are known.”

“Perhaps Mr. Tom Raymond will tell you,” answered Peggy, quickly.  “I’ve thought for some time that he might be one of the Tennis Club that came out to Fairview at my brother’s invitation last summer, and I thought he suspected who I was, and—­and wouldn’t tell because—­because he saw, just as I did, what fun the mistake was.  But now, if he will, he can introduce me—­to my friends, Tilly and Will Wentworth, as—­”

[Illustration:  “Miss Pelham!  Miss Margaret Pelham!”]

“Miss Pelham!  Miss Margaret Pelham!” shouted Tom, before Peggy could go any further.

“Pelham!” cried Tilly, in a dazed way.

“Pelham!” repeated Will.

“Yes, Pelham!  Pelham!” exclaimed Tom, exultantly, flinging up his cap with a chuckle of delighted laughter.

“And you’re not—­you’re not the daughter of that dreadful Smithson?” burst forth Tilly, in a little transport of happy relief.

“‘That dreadful Smithson’?  Who is he, and who said I was his daughter?”

“She said it,” roared Will, darting a furious look at Agnes; “and she cooked it all up out of this,” suddenly pulling the paper from his pocket.

“Give it to me!” cried Agnes, breathlessly, springing forward to snatch the paper from his hand.

“No, no, you wanted me to give it to Miss Smith a minute ago, and now I’ll give it to—­Miss Pelham, and let her see what you’ve wanted to circulate about the house,” answered Will.

“I—­I—­if I happened to notice it before the rest of you—­and—­and thought that it might be this Miss Smith—­”

“That it must be! you insisted,” broke in Will.

“With all that about the change of name, and the age of the girl, and—­and—­the ‘South America’ I saw on the blotting-pad, and the South American dress,” went on Agnes, incoherently,—­“if I happened to be before you, you thought afterward, I know you did, that it might be; and—­”

“With a difference, with a difference!” suddenly rang out Peggy Pelham’s clear young voice in tones of indignation.  She had read the newspaper slip; and there she stood, scorn and indignation in her face as well as in her voice.  “Yes, with a difference,” she went on vehemently.  “If they thought it might be, after you had paraded the thing before them, you,” with a renewed look of scorn, “thought it must be, because you wanted it to be, because you had got to hating me.  Oh, I can see it all now,—­everything, everything; how you patched things together, even to that blotting-pad which I had used after directing my letter to my uncle, Berkeley Pelham, who lives in Brazil.  Oh, to think of such prying and peering,” with a shudder, “and to think of such enmity,