Some of the Andrews girls, with Mrs. Forest and Miss Carrol, were sitting near, and Peggy noticed that they all leaned forward to look at her with a strangely intent expression in spite of their interest in the game. Something was wrong? Or was it that she looked so nice? Peggy hoped devoutly that this was the cause of their unanimous attention.
So she went right ahead and had as good a time here watching the game as she had just enjoyed on the water. Her face was in the sunlight most of the time, for her hat did not shade it as most of the girls' hats did theirs. But Peggy had never minded sunlight and she didn't see why she should begin now, so she leaned out confidently while the hot blaze came full on cheek and nose. The dazzle from the water had already had the best of it, however, and her face was really beyond a much deeper dye of red than it had already assumed.
She discovered this later, when the girls, after a light supper, were all in their rooms at the Inn, excitedly pulling out their pretty dresses for the evening and wiping their faces with all manner of soft creams and lotions after they had scrubbed them to a healthy glow. Poor Peggy gave one look in the glass and sank helplessly down on the bed and buried her small burned face in the pillow.
"It's no use, it's no use," she sighed. "Katherine and Florence, did you ever hear of such a tragedy? And my dress is pink! Oh, dear, oh, me, oh, my!"
But the drifting pictures of the afternoon's happiness were going through her mind, and she was sure nobody would like her when there were so many girls who had remembered that they would need their complexions for the evening! Still, here she was, and she had wanted to come at any cost, and it was probably going to be one of the spectacles of her young life. She would go and have as good a time as she could, and not mind too much that she was a different kind of spectacle all by herself, a sort of little geranium-face in the midst of lilies.
She bathed her face and applied a bit of every kind of lotion, for each of her friends generously thrust theirs upon her in a well-meaning endeavor to discount the too marked effect of the sun.
"I'll be just sticky when I'm through," she sighed, complying humbly with all their well-meant suggestions. Her face shone a triumphant crimson through the results of all their ministrations, however, and she realized that not even powder would do much to mitigate a color as flamboyant as that. To make it worse, it was beginning to peel in funny little rough wrinkles, as a sensitive skin will after such an exposure to sun as she had given hers. So the powder just looked crumbly when it was applied and she turned her eyes away from the mirror with a cowardly determination not to glance that way again. But how can one do one's hair in a brand new style and twine a tiny wreath therein without looking, not once, but many times at one's reflection? But each time the sight that met her disillusioned eyes was a reproach.
