This was the tableau she made when there came another group of shouts and laughing voices from over the bank of the river, and there all of a sudden looking down were a crowd of older girls, carrying luncheon boxes too, and at the moment opening their mouths and eyes wide in astonishment. At first the rest of the Andrews girls were so far back toward the bank that the newcomers did not see them, and all their gaze focused on Peggy and from their faces it was apparent that they scarcely thought her real. Her arms were upstretched toward the descending water and her face, mist-covered, was lifted. Her slim bare feet shone in the sunlight and sparkled through the water like the feet of some very young Diana, resting from the hunt.
Her dress had lost its starchy lines long since and now resembled a Greek costume as much as anything--at least it would be hard to decide that it wasn't.
"I _never_ in my life--" murmured one of the girls, and her voice broke the spell and the others began to descend the steep bank, becoming aware of the rest of Peggy's party as they did so. Peggy herself was still oblivious. The noise of the waterfall obscured all else, and her efforts to breathe in spite of the water that filled her eyes and nostrils and mouth took all her attention.
"That's the dandiest looking girl I ever saw," said the tallest of the newcomers, heartily. "I wonder if she could be at Hampton and I not have seen her. If she's not there she ought to be, and I'm going to try to get her to change her college and come to us."
"Are you Hampton girls?" Katherine came forward and asked, with the frank and friendly directness that is permissible between girls all of an age and all in school. "Because I'm going to Hampton next year. We are Andrews girls now."
She thought she noticed a stir among the Hampton people as she said this, and their gaze traveled eagerly over the entire group from the prep school. For these girls would be among the most important entering Hampton next fall--the Andrews girls always coming in for a large share of the freshman honors, carrying off the class offices and writing the class songs and shining in all the more pleasant and social branches of college life. Then the tall girl looked back toward Peggy. Peggy at the same minute saw her audience and came forth, shame-facedly, like a little drowned rat, Katherine said, while she smoothed the pasty wet folds of her skirt and tried to shake some of the water from her curly hair.
