A Terrible Tomboy

Getting no response to her calls, the speaker, a pretty fair-haired girlof fifteen, flung her brown holland cooking-apron over her head,and ran out across the farmyard into the lightly-falling rain. Shepeeped into the cart-shed, where the hens were scratching aboutamong the loose straw. Certainly Peggy was not there. She searchedin the kitchen garden, but there was nothing to be seen except thedaffodils nodding their innocent heads under the gooseberrybushes.Round through the orchard she sped, bringing down ashower of cherry-blossom as she brushed against the low-growingtrees, and greatly disturbing a robin, who was feeding a young familyin a hole in the ivy, but without any sign of the truant. Here andthere Lilian ran, hunting in all Peggy's favourite haunts—nowpeeping into a hollow yew-tree, now peering at the top of a ladder,now rummaging in the tool-shed, then back through the sandquarryinto the stack-yard, where there was a very good chance thatthe young lady might be hidden away in some snug little holeamong the hay.