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   :PG.Id: 35730
   :PG.Title: Peggy Parsons at Prep School
   :PG.Released: 2011-03-30
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Roger Frank
   :PG.Producer: the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
   :DC.Creator: Annabel Sharp
   :DC.Title: Peggy Parsons at Prep School
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1921
   :coverpage: images/cover.jpg

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Peggy Parsons at Prep School
============================

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      Title: Peggy Parsons at Prep School
      
      Author: Annabel Sharp
      
      Release Date: March 30, 2011 [EBook #35730]
      
      Language: English
      
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   | :xl:`PEGGY PARSONS`
   | :xl:`AT PREP SCHOOL`
   | 
   | BY
   | ANNABEL SHARP
   |
   |

.. image:: images/illus-emb.png
    :align: center

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   |
   |
   | M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY
   | CHICAGO — NEW YORK
   | Made in U. S. A.
   |
   |
   |
   
.. contents:: Contents
   :backlinks: entry
   :depth: 1

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   |
   |
   |
   | :xl:`PEGGY PARSONS AT PREP SCHOOL`

CHAPTER I—THE SERENADE
======================

Peggy Parsons wove her curly hair into a
golden braid, and stretching her slim arms above
her head yawned sleepily.

“Oh, you mustn’t do that,” sniggered her
room-mate out of the semi-darkness of the one-candle-power
illumination. “They don’t allow
it here.”

“Don’t allow what?” said Peggy, beginning
to prance before the mirror to admire the fluttering
folds of her new blue silk kimono, which
had been given her by a cousin the week before
school opened, with the delightful label, “For
Midnight Fudge Parties.”

.. File: 006.png

“Don’t allow what?” she repeated curiously,
bobbing up and down before her reflection,
“can’t I even *yawn* if I want to?”

“No,” her room-mate unsympathetically insisted,
“they teach us manners along with our
French and mathematics, and yawning isn’t one,—a
manner, I mean. Yawning is enough to keep
you from getting high marks. This is a finishing
school we’ve come to, please remember.”

“It will finish me,” sighed Peggy, with a final
whirl of blue draperies, “if I can’t do as I like.
Why, I *always* have.”

“I’m glad I’ve got you for a room-mate, then,”
said the other girl heartily. “It will be such fun
to see what happens.”

Peggy blew out the candle and crept across
the room, in the darkness, nearly colliding with
a little rose tree that had been given to the girls
to brighten their room against their possible
homesickness.

.. File: 007.png

“What’s going to happen now is that I’m going
to sleep,” she laughed. “And I’m glad I’ve
got *you* for a room-mate, Katherine Foster, just—anyway.”

And both girls smiled into the darkness, for
their first day at Andrews had given them a sense
of pleasant anticipation for the rest of the year.

Just as their vivid memories of the preceding
twelve hours began to mix themselves up confusingly
with dreams, the sound of singing bursting
into triumphant volume under their windows
caused both sleepy pairs of eyes to pop open.

“Katherine—?” breathed Peggy excitedly.

“Peggy—?” whispered Katherine, “oh, do
you suppose it *is*?”

“Andrews opened late, and the other schools
were already well into their football and basketball
stage: that afternoon the Amherst team had
been in town to play the local college football
eleven, and there had been rumors that the glee
club had been among those who cheered on the
Amherst side.”

The song came up now, sweet and strong, with
its sure tenor soaring almost to their window, it
seemed.

Swiftly and silently the two were out of bed
and had pattered across to peep down. There
they were! There they really *were*, in the moonlight,
the glee club, singing up to the open dormitory
windows.

   | “Cheer for Old Amherst,
   | Amherst must win.
   | Fight to the fin-ish,
   | *Never* give in.
   | All do your best, boys,
   | We’ll do the rest, boys,
   | For this is old Amherst’s da—ay.
   | Rah, rah, rah....”

Peggy felt her arm being pinched black and
blue, but she was beyond caring.

“O—oh, it’s heavenly,” she sighed.

.. File: 009.png

“Peggy, it’s a serenade,” breathed Katherine
happily.

“Of course it is,” assented Peggy, as if she
were used to this kind of thing, “and it’s a very
nice one.”

“Peggy, oughtn’t you to—to throw down flowers
when you’re serenaded?” Katherine demanded
suddenly.

“Oh, yes, you *have* to,” Peggy agreed, so that
she might not show how ignorant she was of the
requirements of so delightful a situation.

“We haven’t any.” Katherine’s tone was forlorn
and heartbroken.

“Wait,” cried Peggy, scrambling down from
the window seat where she had perched, “the
roses,—off the rose tree.”

And she ran to their treasured plant and
seized it, jardiniere and all, and ran back to the
window so that she might not miss any of
the singing while she was despoiling their little
tree of its blossoms. From every window in the
wing a dim figure might be discerned behind the
shaking lace curtains. With the plant tucked
firmly under one arm Peggy leaned out dreamily.

“It’s all a lovely thing to have happen,” she
said, “now I’m going to begin and throw the roses
down. Ouch! Goodness,—oh, dear!”

She pricked herself on a thorn and in jerking
away her hand she forgot that she was holding
anything.

The rose tree toppled an instant on the window-sill
and then went down, flower pot, jardinière
and all, into those singing, upturned faces, two
stories below. There followed a frightful crashing
sound, and then a stupefied silence.

Peggy, covering her face with her hands,
turned and ran from the window, jumped into
bed and pulled the sheet over her head.

“Oh, they’re dead, they’re dead, and I’ve killed
them,” she thought miserably to herself.

.. File: 011.png

She never wanted to hear a glee-club again,
she never wanted to look into the face of a living
soul. This was a fine ending of a wonderful
day, this was, that she should have killed, goodness
knew how many fine young men, and talented
ones, too. Just when they were singing
up so trustingly, for her to have hurled this calamity
down upon them! She shook with sobs.
Oh, she had only meant to do a kind deed, a *courteous*
deed—and she had killed them. She buried
her poor little crying face deeper into the pillow.

After a few moments she felt her room-mate
shaking her, and when she reluctantly uncovered
her tear-stained face she was astonished to hear
laughter.

“It’s all right, come back to the window quickly,”
Katherine was chortling, “it’s—just great.”

Oh, the glorious shaft of light that shot across
Peggy’s mental horizon! Then they weren’t
dead. No one—not even a heartless room-mate
could laugh at her if she had really killed them.
She dashed her hand across her eyes and went
back to peer cautiously down in the moonlight.

Each of the singers brandished some tiny thing
in the shining white light of the moon, could it
be a—flower—a—*rose*?

   | “Little Rose Girl!
   | Little Rose Girl!
   | We’ll sing and shout your praises o’er and o’er,
   | To you ever, we’ll be loyal,
   | Till the sun shall climb the heavens no more!”

Peggy caught her breath. They were all singing
straight at *her* window,—and oh, moonlit
clouds! and wonder of stars!—to *her*.

“Oh—oh, thank you,” she said softly, over and
over, “thank you, thank you. I’m so glad you’re
alive,—and I’m glad I am, too.”

Fastening the tiny flowers in their buttonholes,
the glee-club began to move off. Peggy sat still
in the window seat, her hands clasped tightly in
her lap.

The cool moonlight drifted in around her, and
she breathed it in slowly. Katherine came and
curled up beside her.

“I don’t feel a bit sleepy now, do you,” she
said, “and I’m glad we showed we liked the serenade.”

Peggy smiled and then she gave one of the forbidden
yawns.

“Oh, it’s nice to be alive, and to be young, and
to be away at school,” she murmured, disregarding
Katherine’s observation. “And, just think,
to-morrow we have a perfectly good new day to
wake up into.”

.. File: 014.png

CHAPTER II—BEING A BELLE
========================

“To think that one of my young ladies—one
of MY young ladies,” the principal repeated impressively,
“should have been guilty of such a
misdemeanor—”

“What’s a misdemeanor?” Peggy whispered in
her room-mate’s ear as they sat in chapel and listened
to an address that was evidently going to
be serious for somebody.

“Sh,” said Katherine. “She means us.”

“Means *us*?” demanded Peggy incredulously.
“Why, I never did any misdemeanors in my life.”

“As to throw—or hurl—or drop a flower-pot
down to the pavement from a window in my
school,” the cold voice continued.

.. File: 015.png

“O—oh,” murmured Peggy, “I thought maybe
she’d seen me yawn.”

“Now I am going to put my young ladies upon
their honor to tell me which one of you showed
so little regard for me and for the school as to
conduct herself in this manner.” The principal
lifted her chin in a deliberate way she had, “and
as you pass out from chapel I request the young
lady who has this particular thing on her conscience
to come forward and tell me that it was
she who did it.”

The lines of marching girls swung down the
aisles, and Peggy rose with them. “I haven’t
it on my conscience,” she told Katherine, “but I
suppose I ought to tell her.”

“I will go with you,” offered Katherine generously.
“It was just as much my fault, and I’d
have done it if you hadn’t.”

But Peggy shook her head and threaded her
way up the aisle to the principal’s desk.

.. File: 016.png

There she paused, waiting.

“Good-morning, Miss Parsons,” the principal
said pleasantly, for she had taken an especial
fancy to Peggy the day before when she had
been left at the school by her aunt. And looking
down into that gleeful little face this morning,
shining as it was with all the joy of living,
and the irresponsible happiness that comes only
with a free conscience, how could she dream of
connecting Peggy’s approach with the confession
she had requested from the girl who had
dropped the rose tree.

“Good-morning,” said Peggy, her face crumpling
into its funny little smile, “I didn’t mean
to.”

“What? Didn’t mean to—child, are you telling
me—?”

There was certainly nothing of the hangdog
about Peggy.

She nodded.

.. File: 017.png

“I was just as sorry as you are for a time,”
she continued, “but you see it made them sing to
me and I *can’t* be sorry about that, can I? Nobody
could. It was so beautiful.”

She explained simply.

“I’m very sorry such a thing should have happened,”
the principal said solemnly when the recital
was over. “The other young ladies are
going to see a performance of the ‘Blue Bird’
this afternoon, and this prevents your going. I
cannot permit you to go, of course, after this,
much as I regret it.”

Peggy turned away, a little twinge of disappointment
in her heart. She had heard the girls
discussing the matinée party for to-day, and she
had never dreamed of not going with them. As
she left the chapel Miss Carrol, the youngest
teacher, timidly approached the principal.

“I am going to chaperone the girls to-day, am
I not?” she asked.

.. File: 018.png

“Yes, Miss Carrol.”

“I thought I’d venture to suggest that Peggy
Parsons be forgiven this once—I don’t think she
did anything so very terrible—and that she be
allowed to come with us to the first party. Don’t
you remember when *you* were away at school—how
heartbreaking it was if you were shut out of
anything, and how easily a fit of homesickness
came on to blot out all the sunlight of the world?
Don’t you remember—Mrs. Forest?”

Mrs. Forest didn’t remember at all. It wasn’t
just because all such experiences for her had
been very long ago—many women remember all
the more tenderly as they grow older,—but she
had set out to be a good disciplinarian, and the
girls she graduated from her school must be as
nearly alike as possible, she wanted them all run
in the same mold of training. But Miss Carrol’s
pleading voice and her eager eyes did what
Mrs. Forest’s own reminiscences could not do
for her—they softened her attitude toward
Peggy and finally she gave her consent for Peggy
to go.

Peggy, flying back to her room, her heart full
of disappointment, unaware of the change in
her immediate fortunes brought about by Miss
Carrol, heard her name mentioned by a group at
the foot of the big staircase.

“This is really a very clever paper little Miss
Parsons has written for my English class,” one
teacher was saying, tapping the folded sheet
Peggy had labored over as the first of her work
for Andrews.

“Yes?” politely inquired another. “That’s
rather unusual for Andrews. We have so many
beautiful girls, but so few brilliant ones. Peggy
Parsons may be popular—and she may develop
into a genius, but she’ll never be a belle, will
she? Not like some of our girls.”

Peggy’s feet grew heavy on the stairs. She
went miserably on to her room and there carefully
locked the door, and went and stood before
the mirror. She had never been conscious of
just how she did look before. She had never
thought of being beautiful, but much less had she
thought of being NOT beautiful. That was too
tragic. She saw a little sober face, with clear
brown eyes, and goldy flyaway hair above them.

“Oh, people will only like me when I laugh,”
she cried, and her face crinkled into its familiar
expression of merriment, and she watched the
fine dark eyebrows curve upward, and the dimples
dance crookedly into the flushed cheeks.

“Ye—es,” she said slowly. “It isn’t so bad
then. But I *will*—be a belle, anyway. You see
if I’m not, I will be one and surprise them all.
Maybe I’ve never tried to make myself look
pretty before. I will try awfully hard now. And
I’ll turn out the most wonderful belle of them
all, I shouldn’t wonder. So there, now.”

.. File: 021.png

She danced back from the mirror, her hair-brush
in her hand.

“I’ll begin at the top,” she said, “and I’ll see
what I can do.”

Just then Miss Carrol knocked at the door.

“Come in,” sang Peggy blithely, her spirits
more or less restored by the prospect of the task
she had set herself.

The door rattled.

“I can’t,” announced Miss Carrol’s voice.

“Oh, I forgot,” cried Peggy, and she ran to
the door and turned the key. Flinging it open,
she laughed up into Miss Carrol’s face. “Come
in,” she invited a second time, “I’m *very* glad to
see somebody even if you’ve only come to scold
me. *Have* you come to scold me?”

Miss Carrol shook her head, and explained that
Mrs. Forest had relented, and she was to be of
the matinée party, after all.

Peggy hugged her gratefully.

.. File: 022.png

“Excuse me,” she said, “for mussing up your
dress, but I just had to. People have been hurting
my feelings all the morning and now you
come and are—kind. And it means that I can
be one right now. I’ll be one for this!”

“One what?” asked the youngest teacher, puzzled.
“You girls have the oddest things in your
minds half the time. What is it you’re going to
be now?”

Peggy hesitated, and then she came over and
whispered.

“A belle,” she said with her lips near Miss Carrol’s
ear. “One of the teachers said I couldn’t
be one.”

To her hurt surprise, her companion threw
back her head and laughed. “Oh, is that all?”
she said. “Well, that’s nothing dangerous. I
must run along now, Peggy, child, but all the
girls are to meet in the parlor at half-past one
for the matinée. We must leave promptly at that
time.”

Katherine’s trunk had not arrived yet, so she
planned to go right to the parlor after luncheon
and wait there for the party to assemble, as she
had no other dress to wear than the blue serge
she had on. But Peggy left the table in a flurry
of excitement and began to lay out all her prettiest
things. A dainty little brown velvet suit,
with a chiffon waist, and an adorable hat that
came dark against her light curls promised well.
She manicured her nails, humming all the while,
then she steamed her face and dashed cold water
on it till it was all glowing. She did her hair
twice and it didn’t suit, so she took it all down
and experimented with it again. Her hair curled
irregularly, and did not lie sleek and smooth
and flatly rippled like the hair of the girls who
had theirs marcelled. So she borrowed Katherine’s
electric iron and with a few swift touches
sought to make her own natural, pretty hair look
artificially waved.

She used powder for the first time. After
rubbing her cheeks with a rough towel to keep
the glow, she spread on the powder as thickly as
she dared. Her nose was alluringly chalk white
when she had finished. It was only talcum powder
but enough of it had its effect. The girls
of Andrews were not allowed to wear jewelry,
except in the evening, unless it were a simple
band bracelet or a tiny, inconspicuous gold chain
and pendant.

So Peggy closed her jewel case with a snap
against the temptation of a long gold snake bracelet
with emerald eyes that would have made her
feel very much more dressed up.

In the early stages of her dressing she thought
she heard someone calling up the stairs, she
thought there was an unusual stir of girls clattering
down into the hall, but she was too engrossed in the
process of becoming beautiful
really to sense what might be going on. Once she
even thought she heard her name, but she was
just applying a precious drop of concentrated violet
to the lace at her throat, and though she called
out mechanically, “What,” she received no answer,
and decided she had been mistaken.

At length, complete, she surveyed herself happily.
“I guess I look almost as pretty as the
actresses, now,” she approved. “I’ll go down to
the parlor—it must be nearly half-past one.”

She went down the stairs, with a curious sense
of the silence of the house. Why weren’t there
more girls trooping down with her? She felt
a chill of misgiving when she reached the parlor
door. No laughter drifted out, no sound of
chattering came from within. With a quick fear
she opened the door and paused wonderingly on
the threshold as a perfectly empty room met her
gaze.

.. File: 026.png

She was too late to start with them—perhaps
she could catch up yet. She would hurry to the
theater and perhaps they had waited for her in
the lobby. Panting, she tore across the lawn and
boarded the first street-car. It seemed to go so
slowly—as if they’d *never* get there. She found
herself tearing the little lacey handkerchief she
had taken from her bag.

There was the theater. She pressed the bell,
and, getting off before the car had come fully
to a stop, breathless, she entered the building. No
group of girls, no Miss Carrol. She looked up
wildly at the clock above the ticket seller’s window.
Four o’clock, it said! Almost time for
the show to be over! Oh, how awful, how awful,
where had the time gone? What had happened
to her? Fighting back the tears at the futility
of everything, she approached the ticket window.

“Are—the—Andrews girls in there?” she faltered.

.. File: 027.png

That was a silly question and she knew it.
Because, of course, they were in there, this was
where they had been coming—and she had, too,
for that matter if she could only have gotten here
on time. But at the minute she could think of
nothing else to say and she was conscious of a
vague hope that the ticket-seller would help her,
would suggest something. She would gladly buy
her own ticket and get in if only she could get to
their box afterward. But she didn’t know which
one it was, and she didn’t know how to manage
it, anyway.

“I don’t know if they are,” the ticket-seller was
replying, casually. “How should I know?”

Peggy turned dejectedly away from the window.
This was more than she could stand.
Never in her life had she felt so little and so
helpless and so—yes, so homesick. She couldn’t
go back to the school and have to face possible
questions. She would stay downtown somewhere
until it was time for the matinée to be over and
then she would return about the same time the
others did.

She drifted out into the waning sunlight of
the street, and looked hopelessly about her. Next
the theater was the public library. This looked
like a refuge and she went in and walked despondently
over to the librarian’s desk.

“Please find me something to read—about—about
girls having a party,” she choked.

-----

When she was back at school, in her own
room, clad once more in the loved blue silk kimono,
the ordeal of dinner and curious questions
over, Katherine, her room-mate, looked up
from her algebra book and said suddenly,

“Oh, Peggy, we missed you so.”

“Did you?” cried Peggy wistfully. “Well, I’ve
decided something. I don’t care a bit about
being a belle. I’d rather get to places on time,
and feel like myself,—and be just Peggy Parsons,
after all.”

.. File: 030.png

CHAPTER III—A BACON BAT
=======================

An eventful day for Peggy came after two
weeks of school. In it began a curious series of
happenings that added flavor to her whole school
life, and gave her, finally, the power to be, as
her room-mate laughingly said, “sort of magic.”

And all this came about through so prosaic a
thing as bacon. The domestic science class, well
under way with an excellent teacher, decided to
have a “bacon bat,” after the custom of the
Smith College girls, all by themselves on some bit
of rock that jutted into the river.

Peggy had helped Katherine do the shopping
for the treat,—Katherine had been at Andrews
for two years now, and knew just how it was
done. Then the seven girls of the class started
off, each with a paper bag in her hand, for the
method of conveying the supplies to the picnic
grounds was always very informal for a bacon
bat. There were no little woven picnic baskets
to hang picturesquely over their arms, there were
no daintily packed little shoe-boxes of sandwiches.
There was just the jar of bacon strips
in a paper bag, the bottle of olives in another
paper bag, and the two dozen rolls, a generous
supply, in the biggest paper bag of all. These
were the simple requisites for a bacon bat, and
even the olives were not necessary, Katherine
termed them useless frills. There was a tiny box
of matches, too, that Peggy slipped into the
pocket of her red jacket. It has happened that
a merry group of girls has gone on a bacon bat
with everything but the matches, and then unless
they were Camp Fire girls and knew how
to coax fire out of two dry sticks they met a terrible
disappointment, when, their appetites all
worked up for the occasion, they found they
couldn’t cook the party after all.

If you were on good terms with the grocer, he
kept a box of matches—the old fashioned kind—under
the counter and offered you a dozen or
so, loose, when you bought your bacon. But
Peggy had wanted to buy a little box, insisting
that if she had to start the fire a dozen might
not be enough.

“Where are we going to have it?” Peggy
thought to ask as they strolled, laughing, along
the road away from the school.

“On the River Bank near Gloomy House,”
cried three girls at once, “that’s the ideal spot.”

“Near—what?” asked Peggy in concern. It
didn’t sound very picnicky to her.

“Right there, ahead,” said Katherine, pointing,
“right through those grounds, and down to the
water—because, of course, we can hardly have
our fire except on some sort of little stone
island—with water enough to put it out if it got rambunctious.”

The girls were turning now over the long,
dank grass, and making their way in the direction
of a great empty-looking ramshackle old
house with sagging porches and dull windows.

“Nobody lives there, do they?” Peggy asked.

“Oh,—sh—yes!”

The girls tiptoed over the grass, skirting the
lawn in order to keep as far away from Gloomy
House as possible. Peggy was not yet familiar
with the traditions of the town in which Andrews
was situated. It seemed strange to her
that after the girls had chosen this place with
such unanimous enthusiasm they should assume
such an air of discomfort and mystery now that
they had come. She studied the old house, dignified
even in its decay, with its trailing, rasping
vines blowing against the pillars of the porch,
and its sunken, uneven steps, and then quite unaccountably
she shivered and hurried past it as
fast as the other girls.

“I don’t want to come here for a picnic,” she
panted, “if it’s all so queer. Why didn’t we
choose some nice sunny place with a little stream
to drink out of, and one big tree for shade? It’s
so dark and overgrown, as we get through here,
that it seems more like an exploring expedition
than a regular picnic to me.”

“Oh,” cried Florence Thomas, the best cook
in the domestic science class, “we can fry bacon
down on those rocks in the river, and there is a
grape-vine swing on the bank that goes sailing
way out over the water with you. Why, there
just isn’t any other place so nice for a picnic—here
you always feel as if you might have adventures.”

“Adventures, at a picnic, usually mean cows
or snakes,” sighed Peggy, “I hope we don’t have
any.”

.. File: 035.png

The girls clambered down the steep slope to
the water, and Florence and Dorothy Trowbridge
began at once to gather twigs and branches.

“How are we going to cook this bacon?” asked
Peggy suddenly, “when we get our fire? Nobody
brought a frying pan.”

“Frying pan!” echoed Florence over an armful
of nice dry chips and twigs. “We get sticks.”

Peggy saw that each girl was breaking a
branch from a near-by tree, testing it to see that
it was not “too floppy,” as Katherine put it, and
would be green enough not to catch fire easily.
Peggy found a delightful little branch, and began
stripping the end, as she saw the others do.
The fire was by this time crackling and it was
a temptation to begin right away, for the walk
had made them hungry—or, perhaps, they hadn’t
needed the walk: healthy girls like healthy boys
are always hungry. But Florence reminded them
that their bacon would simply be burned to a
crisp if they thrust it in the flames now, so they
waited a few minutes, reluctantly enough, until
the red and blue sparks sputtered down to a
steady glow, hotter and hotter at the heart of
the fire. Then the girls each pierced a piece of
bacon with their pointed stick and held it gloatingly
into the red glow. Peggy enthusiastically
opened rolls, so that the crisp hot slices might
go sizzling into place as soon as they were taken
from the fire, and the roll might be clapped together
upon them.

“Isn’t this comfy?” asked Florence, munching
her first fiery sandwich. “If the rain and
wind had never come, I suppose you could find
the ashes, on this flat rock, left by every class
that ever went to Andrews. Ouch!—Mercy!—Peggy,
what did you let me bite that for, when
the end was still burning?”

Peggy laughingly dipped up a cupful of water
from the river and passed it to poor Florence,
who was trying to wink back the tears from her
eyes.

“If you drink that now you’ll smoke,” she
warned delightedly. “Girls, girls,—fire!”

“I—don’t—care—” gulped Florence, waving
the rest of her roll and bacon through the air
to cool it. “Hot as that was, I guess old Mr.
Huntington of Gloomy House, up there, would
be glad to have it. If he can smell the smoke
of this little feast—with that lovely amber coffee
Dorothy is making—I guess he wishes he
was a girl and could come down and get some.
Just think,” she turned to Peggy, “in twenty
years he’s never had any hot coffee—or more
than enough to keep a bird alive.”

Peggy sat down on a stone and poised an olive
half-way to her mouth.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“He’s very poor, you know,” said Florence.

.. File: 038.png

“Too poor to buy coffee?—I should think
somebody in the town—”

“Oh, my dear,” interrupted one of the other
girls, “scared to death! Nobody’d think of offering
to do anything for him. He’s the proudest
man in the world. He used to own most of
this town, but everything has drifted away from
him. He never goes anywhere—nobody ever sees
him. He wouldn’t want to see anyone. He telephones
to the grocery for just a few things once
in a while, and that’s how he gets along. Why,
Peggy, you look so funny.”

“While we’re sitting here, having a party, do
you mean to tell me the man that lives in Gloomy
House is starving?” asked Peggy in a hushed
voice.

“Well, sort of hungry, but don’t you worry
about it, we can’t do anything about it, Peggy.”
Florence handed Peggy a fresh roll with a crisp
slice of bacon temptingly projecting from the
ends. “He couldn’t have been starving for
twenty years, you know—but it would be nearer
that than I’d like to experience for myself.”

Peggy’s head drooped thoughtfully. The sunlight,
glinting down here and there through the
dense green of the trees, shone in a little patch
of light on her brown-gold hair. She was a vivid
little person, with laughing black eyes and cheeks
that flared red through their tan. Her brown
arms were clasped over her knees now, as she
studied the moist, pebbly sand at her feet.

“*I’d* have made him some coffee,” she said at
last, her crooked dimple flickering into view for
just an instant.

“No, you wouldn’t,” denied Florence Thomas,
“nobody has been in that house to do anything
as daring as that for years. There’s a mystery
about it, I tell you—and, in spite of story books,
nobody likes to probe too deeply into mysteries.
Some people even say that a relative of Mr.
Huntington’s stole all his money from him and
that’s why he has to live so poorly. Yes, there
are lots of stories—”

Peggy brushed the crumbs out of her lap serenely.

“How silly,” she said, “as if anybody’s stealing
from the poor old man were reason enough why
all the rest of the townspeople should stay away
from him and leave him poor,” she said. “What
has that to do with my making him some coffee?
Even if he’d been the one who stole—still
I don’t see the application to this particular
question,” she concluded.

“Well, there are other tales,” insisted the crestfallen
Florence, and, their coffee cups in their
hands, the girls gathered around to tell Peggy
many harrowing incidents connected with the
great house back from the river, and she heard
them quietly, piercing slices of bacon with her
stick the while.

.. File: 041.png

“Let’s go up and cook him a dinner,” she cried,
springing to her feet when they had done. “We
are a cooking class, aren’t we, and that’s the
best thing we do, isn’t it? And here we go on
just preparing all the good things back at school
for us to eat ourselves—it seems, well, piggish.
Wouldn’t it be lovely to demonstrate our next
lesson by bringing all the materials up to Gloomy
House and cooking up a big, wonderful dinner,
and having it with Mr. Huntington? We can’t
give him a million dollars or anything like that,
but we can make one day a lot brighter—and, besides,
I can’t stand it to think of anyone hungry—*will*
you, girls? What do you say?”

She stood before them, lifting her slim hand
for the vote, her eyes shining with eagerness to
put her plan at once into execution.

The other girls gasped. Peggy, although she
had been with them so short a time, had won a
large place in their admiration.

.. File: 042.png

“He wouldn’t let us,” reminded Florence, puckering
her forehead thoughtfully. “Didn’t I tell
you he’d bite anybody, fairly, that dreamed of
trying to offer him charity? Peggy, I believe
you’re partly right, though, maybe we could do
something, but it would never work that way.”

“Well,” said Peggy promptly, sitting down to
think it out, “how can it be done?”

For to Peggy life presented no unsolvable problems.
She never thought of cluttering her joyous
way with impossibilities. Once a plan seemed
good to her it was only a question of How, and
not of Whether.

“We might invite a lot of people to the school,”
timidly suggested one of the young cooks.

“He’d never come,” Florence shook her head.

“Well, then,” cried Peggy, “here we are! Let’s
give a series of dinners—at the houses of the
trustees, and the different girls in the class, just
to show what we can do, and we’ll have the accounts
put in the town paper, so he’ll see what
we’re doing, and *then*—” her eyes shone and
she could hardly talk fast enough to let the girls
see the glory of her new idea, “then we’ll go to
his house and ask permission to give *him* one,
and it won’t be charity or anything, and it will
be fun for everybody—oh, girls, isn’t that gorgeous?”

“OOoo—oo,” shivered Florence at the thought
of really committing herself to such a daring decision.
“Ye-es, I think we might do that. But
we’d never have the courage to go and invite
him.”

“Peggy would,” championed the timid one.
“Let’s appoint her a committee of one.”

“Unanimously appointed a committee of one,”
shouted the other girls gleefully. “Peggy, how
soon will all this be?”

Peggy laughingly flung aside her toasting
stick, sprang erect, and tried vainly to smooth
back her flying gold-toned hair. “Right—NOW!”
she declared triumphantly, “we won’t
wait to give it to the trustees first.”

“Good-by, Peggy,” murmured Florence demurely,
and the others drew closer together as
Peggy actually turned her back on them and went
up the slope to Gloomy House.

Surprised at her daring, overwhelmed by the
boldness of the thing she had undertaken, they
watched Peggy disappear over the top of the
river bank.

.. File: 045.png

CHAPTER IV—THE INSIDE OF GLOOMY HOUSE
=====================================

Up the long walk to Gloomy House, her feet
sinking in the wet leaves that had fallen from
the branches overhead, Peggy went slowly, her
heart pounding.

She was doing what no one else in town would
have dared to do, and as she neared the old house,
with its tumbled-down step, she began to wonder
if perhaps she was afraid.

“Walk on, walk on,” she whispered to herself,
for she knew that if she hesitated for an instant
she would run. And how could she go
back and face the cooking class if, after all her
planning, she was a coward now?

So mechanically she walked on, and at last she
found herself really ascending the creaking steps.
When she stood on the porch with its leafless and
ragged vines flapping in the wind a kind of chill
unreality seemed to shut her in. She hurried
to ring the bell so that someone—anyone—would
come and she would not be alone. The bell was
an old fashioned one, and as she rang she heard
it jangling emptily through the house. It was
certainly a very dismal way for callers to have
to announce themselves.

When the unpleasant sound had ceased the
house and everything about it settled back to silence
again. This lasted and lasted. Peggy
clutched nervously at her little red jacket. What
if nobody would come at all? There was no one
TO come, except Mr. Huntington himself—and
now he evidently wasn’t going to. She might
have known. She was overwhelmed with a sense
of failure. Those lovely hot muffins she had
dreamed of preparing for him, that wonderful
steak, smothered in onions, that delicious— Down
the uncarpeted stairs inside she could hear
the reluctant thud, thud of footsteps!

Oh, he *was* coming.

Gratingly, the door swung open and a man’s
head looked cautiously out.

Peggy reflected that Mr. Huntington looked
a great deal more scared than she was, and the
thought helped a little.

“How do you do?” she asked faintly.

Mr. Huntington looked down at the vivid little
figure in the red coat, and his eyes widened.

“A—how do you do?” he said mildly.

Well, he wasn’t going to eat her, anyway, so
she needn’t be so frightened, Peggy decided with
a breath of relief.

“Oh, Mr. Huntington,” she said with a surprising
increase of confidence, “I came—I came—I—came—”
but the confidence had evaporated
before she could find words to explain.

“I see you did,” replied the old man, still
mildly—and could she believe that twinkle in his eyes
was a smile? Perhaps he didn’t often have much
to smile about, so that this was the best he could
do.

“Won’t you come in?” he invited, as an afterthought.

And Peggy followed him into Gloomy House.

The hall was stately, with its wide folding
doors opening into the library on one side and a
dining-room on the other. In it were an old
tall clock and a black walnut hat-rack.

“It’s a little chilly in here for you, I’m afraid,”
said her host politely.

The day had been cool even out in the sunshine
and they had been glad when their crackling
fire was made on the river bank. But in
this damp, big room there was a biting quality
out of all proportion to the temperature outside.

“It’s not—at—all—cold,” stammered Peggy,
through chattering teeth, trying to make her tone
of everyday courtesy like that Mr. Huntington
had used.

“I just wanted to invite you to something,” she
plunged bravely into her mission. “It’s a special
treat to be given by our cooking class of Andrews
school.”

“To invite—?” Mr. Huntington looked
vaguely puzzled and alarmed. “My dear young
lady,” he protested, “I haven’t been invited to
anything in twenty years.” Then an understanding
look came over his face. “Oh, I see,” he
murmured. “How much are the tickets?”

“Oh,” cried Peggy, hurt and chagrined, “oh,
there are no tickets—oh, *no*, that’s not the way
it is at all. You see the cooking class is—awfully
proud of itself and we can stand burned hands
and horrid blackened dishes that we couldn’t at
first. And we can get awfully good dinners, too.
So we thought that instead of just getting them
up at school and eating them ourselves, we’d
give a series of parties around at the homes of
the girls and the trustees of the school and I—I
thought we’d come and give one at your house,
too,” she wound up breathlessly.

The old man looked as surprised as she could
have hoped.

“But there is no young girl here who goes to
the school,” he said finally, “and I am not a trustee.”

And all of a sudden the explanation that Peggy
had thought so complete showed itself up at its
true value, nothing at all.

“N—no,” she admitted, crestfallen, “that’s
so.”

The misery in her face made Mr. Huntington
want to do something for her.

“If the girls of the school simply want a place
to give a party—is that it?—somewhere away
from the school itself, where they can be more
free,—I should be distinctly terrified at the presence
of so many young ladies after so long a
time of solitude, but still I think I might go
through with it—why not let me give them a
party, if they will be so kind as to cook the things
I furnish?”

Peggy’s round eyes studied Mr. Huntington’s
face thoughtfully. How people hated to admit
they were poor! Here he was offering to buy
enough food for a dozen hungry girls when he
himself had barely enough to eke out a scanty
meal from one week’s end to another, according
to the girls’ stories.

“Oh,—please,” she hastened to put in. “That’s
part of our course, knowing what to buy and
all that, and we do so want to have a few real
chances to use all the knowledge that is being
pounded into us. If I can go back and tell those
girls—” her breath caught in her throat for an
instant at the prospect of such a triumphant moment,
“if I can go back and tell those girls,” she
repeated, “that we can give a party in Gloo—I
mean here, why that will be the best time I’ve
had this term!”

The old man was looking at her quizzically.

“For some reason you apparently want to very
much,” he mused. “Well, you are the first person
who has come to me in a number of years
with the idea of giving something rather than
taking. If only for that reason I should encourage
you to have your way. For the last
twenty years people have been coming to me now
and then—whenever a certain rumor starts up
afresh—wanting this, that and the other: subscriptions
to charities, money to put their children
through school: capital to start them in business.
But I always tell them,” he chuckled softly,
“I always let them know that I am very poor.”

Oh, then, he didn’t mind having folks know,
after all. Peggy winced at the open way he
spoke of it now, after all her efforts to conceal
the fact that she knew his poverty.

“Oh,” she said uncomfortably, “you’re not
*very* poor. I’m poor, too. My aunt sends me
to school, but when I am graduated I’m going
to earn my own living!” She shot it out at him,
all breathless to see the effect of so astounding
a piece of news. Something at once so tragic
and so thrilling.

“You are?” queried the old man absently.
“Well, I sometimes think those are the happiest
days of a person’s life—the days of piling up
their fortune—”

“Of—of—my goodness!” gasped Peggy. “*I’m*
not dreaming of piling up a fortune. What could
I do that would be worth very much? I’m going
to—I’m going—to—”

“Yes?” asked the old man.

“I might teach something—they say I’m good
in English, or I might—why I might *cook*. Wait
until you’ve tried this dinner I want to get up
for you and then maybe you can recommend me
for a position as cook sometime—oh, now you
see you *must* let us have the dinner.”

“I see it now, of course,” smiled Mr. Huntington.
And then a look of real eagerness came
over his lonely face. “What day had you—thought
of for the festivities?” he asked.

“Oh,” began Peggy thoughtfully, “there are
lots of good days for it—any Sunday or—”

Mr. Huntington murmured something, she
wasn’t quite sure what. She paused inquiringly.
She mustn’t let him know she suggested Sunday,
because of its being a proverbially lonely day for
people without family or friends, and if he had
a different choice—

“Thanksgiving,” he was saying slowly to himself,
so low that Peggy could hardly hear him.
“Thanksgiving always is a—hard day to get
through.”

.. File: 055.png

“Hard! Why, it’s gorgeous! Oh, if we only
can get our ice-box principal to let us, I’m sure
the girls would *love* to give the dinner on Thanksgiving.
It will give us an opportunity to learn
how to fix turkey and cranberry and all those
things. We will settle that, then, because I’ll
tease my head off when I’m talking to Mrs. Forest—I’ll
even kiss her if I have to, and in the
end she’ll say ‘Bless you, my children, go and
give your party.’”

“And I shall say bless you, too, I shouldn’t
wonder,” murmured the old man, with a hint of
a smile in his eyes. “It’s been eighteen years
since Thanksgiving meant anything in this house.
My daughter was here then, with her husband
and baby son. But—”

Peggy looked around the dark, gloom-filled interior
of the Huntington house and wondered
where they were now, the rest of this family,
that had cherished Thanksgiving day. But she
did not want to ask and hurt Mr. Huntington’s
feelings.

“Well,” she assured him eagerly, “we’ll just
have a perfectly wonderful party. And I’ll bring
my new chafing-dish and Katherine’s percolator
and we’ll make the fudge and the coffee ourselves.”

“Fudge is a necessary part of the affair?” the
old man smiled questioningly.

“Of course,” assented Peggy in surprise.
“That was about the first thing I learned to do
at Andrews,—make the most wonderful nut
fudge and plain fudge and sea-foam.”

“And yet some people still cling to the idea
that too much education for girls is dangerous,”
murmured Mr. Huntington. “Now *I* shall be
heartily in favor of it from this time forth.”

“I guess I’ll go back and tell the girls everything,”
Peggy sighed contentedly, “they’ll want
to begin planning the grinds right away. You
won’t mind being ground, too, will you?”

“Aren’t you mistaking me for the coffee, young
woman?” laughed her new friend. “That would
be rather a mean trick to play on an old man,
seems to me.”

Peggy’s face was scarlet. She did not know
whether he was entirely in fun or not. The language
of the school world was equipped with a
strange vocabulary to outside ears, and she felt
very guilty for letting Mr. Huntington fall into
such a humiliating mistake.

“Grinds are just—gists,” she explained hastily,
and went out of the door as Mr. Huntington
held it open for her, with a sense of having
made everything clear.

.. File: 058.png

CHAPTER V—MANAGING MRS. FOREST
==============================

As Peggy started running back to the place
she had left the girls, she became aware that
someone in a blue Peter Thompson had come up
the hill to wait for her, and was at the moment
gazing intently toward Gloomy House, while
the wind flapped her skirts and fluttered her hair
free of its ribbon.

“Katherine, Katherine,” shouted Peggy, and
the figure started to life at once and came tearing
toward Peggy until they were like a couple
of young express trains about to collide at full
speed.

“I’ll save you, I’ll save you,” Katherine was
crying breathlessly. “I’ll be there in a minute,—I’ll
save you, dear.”

.. File: 059.png

And then the collision happened.

“Oh, oh, oh,” gasped Peggy as she and Katherine
rolled over each other, a whirling mélange of
blue dress and red coat, down the steep slope
of the river bank right into the midst of the
waiting group of bacon batters.

Around them as they sat up, still seeing stars,
and aching from the bumps newly raised on their
foreheads to their scratched knees and ankles,
arose a hubbub of questionings, consolations and
reproaches.

“Oh, my—land!” moaned Peggy, winking the
dust and bits of dried leaves out of her eyes.
“I hope you don’t feel as badly as I do, Katherine.
What made you say—” she spoke now
in a puzzled tone, for full consciousness was coming
back, “whatever made you say that you would—*save*
me? Instead you nearly killed me, you
know.”

“Why, I—ouch! my poor arm—I was going
to save you from the ghosts and things at Gloomy
House, of course,” answered Katherine indignantly.
“You were gone so long and we were
all so worried, that I climbed the top of the hill
to see if I couldn’t make out what had become
of you—and then there you were flying away
from that awful place like mad, scared to pieces
at something. Naturally, I hollered that I’d
save you. What kind of a room-mate would I
have been if I hadn’t?”

The tears suddenly started to Peggy’s eyes.
She felt just at the moment, in spite of her
bruises, all the beautiful thrill that is inspired by
the discovery of absolute loyalty and affection in
a room-mate. The autumn sunlight glinting
down on Katherine’s yellow hair suddenly
seemed to Peggy like a halo, and impulsively she
reached toward her.

“It was fine of you, Katherine,” she said, “but
I didn’t need saving—I was running because I
was in a hurry to tell you people that the dinner
is on. And Mr. Huntington doesn’t mind the
grounds—I mean the grinds, but I’m so wounded
I can’t talk straight,—and we’re to have it on
Thanksgiving if Friend Forest will let us. Girls,
he’s perfectly wonderful—”

“*Oh*, dear,” sighed Katherine, “and all that
worry on my part for nothing.”

“And all your injuries for nothing, too,” sniggered
Florence Thomas heartlessly. “You infants
with your terribly impromptu manner of returning
to our midst will be the death of me yet.
Peggy, please draw a long, calm breath and then
let us in on what really happened in Gloomy
House.”

To an eager audience, then, Peggy told the
whole outcome of her adventure, interrupting
herself now and then to suggest, with some irrelevance
certain dishes that would be particularly
desirable as part of the dinner.

.. File: 062.png

“Do you suppose Mrs. Forest will ever let us
do such a novel sort of thing?” asked Katherine
as the girls, after stamping out the remains of
their little fire on the river rocks, gathered up
their coats and sweaters to go back to the school.

“Not—for—a—minute.” Florence Thomas
dashed their hopes with tones as firm as Mrs.
Forest’s own might have been in speaking of the
matter.

Peggy was rubbing her black and blue forehead
thoughtfully.

“Peggy!” cried Katherine, “Florence doesn’t
think Mrs. Forest will have it.”

Peggy smiled, a long, slow smile, and her black
eyes narrowed to mere laughing slits. “She’ll be
crazy about it,” she insisted.

It wasn’t until dinner time that the girls, in
their dainty evening frocks, already seated at the
various little tables, with the candles gleaming
onto their flushed cheeks and powdered necks
and arms through the pink candle shades, learned
what Peggy intended to do to Mrs. Forest to
make her prophecy come true. Some of the girls
had declared she meant to try hypnotism, others
poison, and some said she was planning to have
the President of the United States wire that Mrs.
Forest should yield to her will.

Peggy, herself, came in to dinner late. This in
itself was an awful offense. Every head, blonde,
dark and red-gold had long since been raised
from the grace, and were bowed again, more enthusiastically,
over the soup. Oh, the tiny little
chiffon “swish” that rustled out from Peggy’s
lovely blue frock, and the gentle, ladylike tap,
tap of her pretty little blue slippers as she moved
across the glazed floor of the dining-room and
bent for an instant at Mrs. Forest’s place to whisper,
“Pardon me,” rather as if she were conferring
a favor by her notice than apologizing for a
heinous sin. Then she slipped into her chair,
which happened to be at Mrs. Forest’s very table,
and sat, sweet and erect, with the soft candle
light over her gold-glinting hair, in her radiant
black eyes, and deepening the wonderful, sweeping
color of her face. Her slender neck was delicate
and proud as a princess’. The other girls’
fingers rested motionlessly on their soup spoons
for an instant, during which they looked at their
Peggy, spellbound. There was an air of graciousness,
of regal beauty about her. There was
no trace of the poor little Peggy who had once
tried so hard to be a belle and had failed so
miserably. This Peggy was lovely in some wonderful,
heart-stopping fashion that made them all
marvel.

Mrs. Forest’s eyes traveled over that graceful
figure and the sternness gave way to something
else. The little Miss Parsons was developing
into the very type of girl to make Andrews most
proud, she reflected.

.. File: 065.png

Each year when June came she took the girls
who had perfect records for behavior to Annapolis
for one of the hops. When Peggy had
come in late she was deciding Peggy should never
hear the marine band under her auspices or dance
with any lads in uniform. But as she considered
what other girl in the school would do her
so much honor as this wonderful, angelic appearing
little creature, or whose program would be
more eagerly filled by the good-looking young
midshipmen who always crowded with enthusiasm
around the Andrews girls?

“Mrs. Forest,” began Peggy in a worldly, conversational
tone, after a few minutes, “isn’t the
old Huntington place beautiful? And did you
ever notice that large portrait in the hall—the
Sargent?”

Mrs. Forest gasped. “In the hall?” she asked
sharply, “*IN* the hall?”

Peggy nodded.

.. File: 066.png

“Mr. Huntington belongs to one of our old
aristocratic families, here, Miss Parsons,” the
principal began pompously. “He is a very proud
and very retiring sort of person. Since he lost
the vast fortune of the Huntingtons he has never
cared for society and no one is welcome in his
house. Although I am acquainted with the members
of all the first families here, I have not had
occasion to meet Mr. Huntington—though we
all know him by sight. And I should prefer
that my young ladies did not demean themselves
and me by *peering in at the hall windows* and
ferreting out the Sargents on the wall.”

“O-oh,” breathed Peggy, with the tiniest little
society sigh. “Mr. Huntington is a very good
friend of mine and as I stopped in to talk a moment
with him to-day—”

One of the girls choked and ignominiously
thrust her napkin almost into her month to keep
back the strange chortlings and chucklings that
were trying to break forth.

Mrs. Forest’s eyes grew round, but her face
had that set expression maintained by a person
who wants to show no surprise whatever, even
in the face of one of the greatest shocks of her
life.

“He is a friend of yours?—I didn’t know,”
she murmured, all honey.

“Yes, and he so approves of my being in this
school,” continued Peggy, with a graceful little
rushing eagerness. “He says he thinks we learn
just the right things. I told him about the cand—I
mean I told him the things we learn and
he said he approved of higher education for
girls. He would like to meet you, Mrs. Forest.”

“So?” said Mrs. Forest in rather pleased surprise.
“Well, I never thought he cared about
meeting anybody—did he say anything like that,
really?”

.. File: 068.png

“Say?—why, he wants us to go there for
Thanksgiving dinner!” cried Peggy rapturously.
“You and me and the whole school!”

The utter strangeness of any such desire on
Mr. Huntington’s part,—its incredible suddenness—was
already beginning to fade out in Mrs.
Forest’s practical mind before the economic advantages
such an invitation offered. Times were
hard that year, and while she liked the girls to
be wonderfully well satisfied with the holiday
dinners at the school, nevertheless turkey, cranberries,
pies, almonds ran expenses up greatly.
In one stupendous jumble the necessary preparations
had been oppressing her mind now for several
days, and all the scratch pads on her desk
were covered with scrawling figures indicating
the amount of money it would take to put so
elaborate a dinner through.

If anybody in the town was so markedly peculiar
as to invite a whole school to Thanksgiving dinner,
she felt an immediate inclination
to take advantage of it.

Around the table as Peggy had finished speaking,
and while Mrs. Forest toyed with her salad,
went a barely audible chorus of groans from
the girls. How could Peggy do such a short-sighted
thing as to include their principal in the
plan? She knew as well as anyone that her presence
would spoil everything. In their hearts they
had known that some one of the teachers would
have to go along with them even if the impossible
came true and they were allowed to give the
party. But they had hoped it would be Miss Carrol,
and that Mrs. Forest would be safely shaken
off with her blightingly rigid ideas of discipline
for at least that one day. Now Peggy had hopelessly
gotten them into having her if they went
at all. Peggy pretended not to notice their unhappy
glances in her direction.

“That’s very kind of your friend,” Mrs. Forest was
saying in a sugary voice. “I’m sure the
school ought to feel honored at an invitation to
Huntington House—”

“*Gloomy* house,” whispered Florence Thomas,
who was sitting on the other side of Peggy.

Mrs. Forest frowned slightly. “To Huntington
House,” she repeated mouthingly. “It used
to be the center of all the social activities in the
town a long time ago. But after the fortune went—and
the daughter and her family went
away—”

“Yes, wasn’t that too bad,” murmured Peggy.
“His grandson is older than I am, now.”

“You know him, too?” asked Mrs. Forest
quickly.

“No,” admitted Peggy. “I haven’t met him—yet.”

“You think Mr. Huntington was perfectly—serious
in his invitation? It was a definite one?”
Mrs. Forest asked thoughtfully.

.. File: 071.png

“Yes, very,” Peggy assured her. “And we
girls are going to cook the dinner,—to show what
clever people you are training up in this school,
you know.”

For Peggy had decided within herself that
Mrs. Forest need not know that the girls were
going to purchase the supplies for the dinner,
also. If Mr. Huntington made a good impression
on the principal just as things were, then
let well enough alone, was her idea.

A curious, weighing look had crept into Mrs.
Forest’s eyes. Peggy thought she was trying to
decide whether or not to permit the girls to
accept, and to go herself. But the principal’s
next remark showed that she had already come
way beyond that phase of the question and was
actively considering even the remote advantages
that might accrue as a result of their joint appearance
at Huntington House on Thanksgiving
day.

.. File: 072.png

“Perhaps,” she said softly, “perhaps—Mr.
Huntington’s affairs are turning out a bit better
nowadays and he might be willing to donate
fifty dollars to the new gymnasium we need so
badly.”

Peggy put her hand over her mouth to stop
the sudden exclamation of dismay that she must
otherwise have uttered. The school did need a
decent gymnasium, everybody knew that. And
Mrs. Forest besought every rich girl who came
to the school to interest her parents to the extent
of getting them to give contributions. For
five thousand dollars they could build a very
nice one, large enough for their comparatively
small school, and well enough equipped to start.
Once in a while a girl in the spirit of generous
affection for Andrews gave ten dollars or so
out of her allowance, but the fund was not coming
along very fast.

The idea of going to a party at Mr. Huntington’s
house and then dunning that poor old man
for a portion of the expense of building something
in which he could really have not the least
particle of interest was particularly repugnant to
Peggy.

“Graft, Mrs. Forest,” she said daringly, shaking
her finger and laughing a little. “Regular
graft, and no fair.”

As Mrs. Forest flushed and tried to smile
Peggy recalled the curious remark Mr. Huntington
had made about people coming to him
for money every time “certain rumors” came up
afresh. She pondered over this.

“I will write a little note of acceptance,” Mrs.
Forest mused.

And, after dinner, to the anguish of all the
girls, she did.

“That was the only way she’d let us go,”
Peggy told them all in self-defense, and then in
the delight of definite plans their joy in the prospect
returned.

.. File: 074.png

CHAPTER VI—THE BEAN AUCTION
===========================

You wouldn’t have recognized Gloomy House
if you had seen it before the Andrews girls’ ministrations
and then walked into it in company
with those gay young people on Thanksgiving
noon. All spick and span and as gloomless as
a house should be on that wonderful day, it was
made cheery by leaping flames in the big fireplaces,
and by gorgeous, flaunting chrysanthemums
in tall vases. Mr. Huntington was all
dressed up for the occasion and came forward
to greet the guests, now in their best clothes, just
as if he had not said good-by to most of them an
hour earlier when they ran out the back door
toward their school, clad in checked aprons and
equipped with scrubbing brushes and brooms and
mops.

Mrs. Forest, of course, had not been one of the
broom brigade, nor of the more aristocratically
occupationed cooking contingent, either. She
swept magnificently into the room and gave Mr.
Huntington a high handshake that was meant
to impress him very much, but didn’t.

“I think the dinner is nearly ready,” called
a gay little voice from the kitchen, and Peggy’s
head was thrust through the doorway, all bright
with its crooked dimples much in evidence. Her
fair hair was curling moistly around her forehead
and her face was all pink and hot from
being so near the stove for so long a time.

“It’s been a terrible ordeal if you want to know
it,” complained Florence Thomas, her assistant,
laughing as they brought the dinner to the table.
“I feel all sizzled up and roasted, and both my
hands are cut and burned beyond recognition.
But if *anyone ever* saw such a wonderful dinner
before, I envy them the experience, that’s
all.”

The long-unused table at Huntington House
was one of the most gorgeous sights that the
hungry eyes of school-girls ever beheld. Mr.
Huntington himself looked as if he could hardly
believe he was awake when he saw its lavish
magnificence.

The girls in their enthusiasm had given the
dinner many touches that more experienced
housewives would never have happened to think
of. The color scheme was golden orange and
brown. The center-piece was a triumphant
pumpkin hollowed out and scalloped and laden
with oranges, grapes, and very red apples. The
turkey smoked in the middle of the table with
the vegetable dishes clustered around it. And
in most beautiful script, worked out in nuts and
stem raisins arranged on the tablecloth, was the
word “Thanksgiving.”

At each place was the “grind” with the person’s
name on it, and such shrieks of laughter
as filled the room while the girls, the principal
and the old man trouped around the table reading
the funny legends, examining the ridiculous souvenirs
appended, all in a hurried and eager endeavor
to find their own places! Not nearly all
of the girls could sit at the table—there were
sixty in the school,—but the grinds were arranged
near together and then each girl took her
plate with a plentiful helping of everything and
sat down in one of the chairs by the fireplace
or against the wall of the great dining-room.

Mr. Huntington was not “ground” so very
badly, after all. He found at his place a quaint
little box painted to represent a house, with tiny
doors and windows marked on it. It bore the
legend “Gloomy House,” and falling from the
door were weird little pasteboard roly-poly objects
labeled “Glooms.” These were flat but stood
erect by virtue of wee standards at the back
pasted to the paper yard of the house. They
were in all attitudes of scurrying away with
ridiculous faces expressing grief. A slip of
paper invited: “Lift the roof of Gloomy House
and see why the Glooms flee.”

Mr. Huntington laughed with the rest, but his
hand slightly trembled as he slowly lifted the
roof of the little pasteboard house. Inside were
sixty fudge hearts and a further assurance,
“Sixty hearts of sixty girls.”

Could it be possible that there were tears in his
eyes to make them glisten suddenly like that?
Peggy looked down at her grind to hide the sudden
swift seriousness that passed over her own
face, when her eyes met something so incredible
that she burst into shrieks of laughter. She
had prepared most of the grinds with the others,
but of course hers had been kept a secret and
she had not seen it until this minute. Hers and
Katherine’s were in one, being nothing more
nor less than two smashed dolls somewhat jumbled
up in appearance, one wearing a blue Peter
Thompson and the other a red coat. There
were black and blue bumps painted on their dented
foreheads. Around the waist of the red-coated
doll went a ribbon on which was lettered
frantically,

  “S.O.S., S.O.S.”

And around the blue-dressed one a ribbon declared,

  “I’ll save you! I’ll save you.”

The verse that accompanied it went as follows:

   | “Humpty and Dumpty met on a hill.
   | Humpty and Dumpty had a great spill.
   | All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
   | Couldn’t put Humpty or Dumpty together again.”

.. File: 080.png

When full duty had been done to the main
dinner the beautiful pumpkin and mince pies that
were Katherine Foster’s own effort were brought
in with wild cheers to greet them, that not even
the pokes and taps and frowns of Mrs. Forest
could do anything to check.

“Miss Parsons—” began Mr. Huntington,
rising in his place.

“Peggy,” she corrected from the other end of
the room.

“Peggy,” he began again, “asked me to let
her go through with this experiment in order that
some day I might conscientiously recommend her
for a cook. And I want to say—” he raised
his voice, “that after the spread I’ve had to-day
I’m willing and anxious to recommend any one
of you sixty girls, domestic science class or otherwise,
to anything in the United States that you
may want.”

The girls interrupted with joyous laughter.

.. File: 081.png

“And if there *is* anything any of you can think
of now that she’d especially like to have, I’ll do
my best to get it for her,” he continued.

The girls, of course, took it all as merely a
polite speech and liked it very much, but Mrs.
Forest felt that here was an Opportunity, spelled
with a capital. She carefully brushed the crumbs
from her lap and rose, while to their horror the
girls heard her say, “If your kind offer includes
all of us, Mr. Huntington, there is one thing we
all want very much and perhaps you would be
willing to help us a little toward—”

Peggy coughed at this minute so violently that
she completely distracted the attention of everyone
from Mrs. Forest, and it was some three minutes
before the spasm was entirely over and other
sounds could be heard again. Peggy was exhausted
from the wracking efforts of that cough
and she sat limply back hoping for the best. But
Mrs. Forest was suavely beginning again.

.. File: 082.png

“To go back to what I started to ask, Mr.
Huntington, there is one thing that Andrews
has wanted for a long time and a little contribution—”

Here, oddly enough, Katherine was seized with
a fit of coughing that rivaled Peggy’s in violence
and duration.

“Somebody else will have to think up something
better next time,” she whispered out of
the corner of her mouth a few minutes later as
her gaspings ceased. “It isn’t *natural* to have
any more of us affected that way.”

“Poor girls,” murmured Mrs. Forest, “they
must have gotten overheated getting the dinner
and this room is cooler. Well, as I was
about to say—”

At this point Florence Thomas quietly fainted
dead away and toppled into a little chiffon heap
on the hearth rug.

A slight titter of delight rippled through the
room, incongruously enough, and Mrs. Forest
glared at the offenders.

“Why, how heartless of you,” she said, bending
with difficulty and lifting her pupil’s limp
head and patting her perfectly normally rosy
face. “Have you some whisky, Mr. Huntington?
In an emergency of this kind I think it is
perhaps permissible to give it—”

But before Mr. Huntington returned, Florence
was beginning to sigh her way back to consciousness
and her eyes fluttered open and she
shook her head when the spoon with the whisky
was offered.

“Why—why—where am I—did I—faint or
something?” she murmured innocently, and dangerous
as they knew their mirth to be, this was
too much for the girls and they shouted out their
appreciation in laughter that was beyond their
efforts to control.

Of course Mrs. Forest must have understood,
but someway they didn’t care. She would have
to be “sport enough to stand for it,” in their own
way of putting it. And she seemed to be, for
she did not pursue the subject of the contribution
further in their hearing, and how could they
know that she tagged Mr. Huntington into the
library while they were all clearing off the dishes
and put the whole proposition to him there in
what Peggy would have called her graftiest way?

When the girls themselves came into the library
for the great game of bean auction which
was always one of the merriest features of an
Andrews spread, Mrs. Forest was looking quite
unconscious of any rude intentions and Mr.
Huntington’s expression was one of whole-hearted
joy and happiness, so they could not even guess
what had transpired.

On the library table was piled a fascinating
collection of little packages, wrapped in varicolored
paper, some daintily tied with ribbon,
others knotted about by the coarsest twine.
These were of all shapes and some looked soft
and others hard. “Nothing over ten beans,”
was the inscription placarded above them.

Each girl had brought one package which was
to be auctioned off for beans distributed in equal
numbers among the bidders.

“Only ten beans for each person,” warned
Peggy as she doled the smooth little white objects
into outstretched hands, “so don’t bid recklessly.”

By careful hoarding it was sometimes possible
to buy in several articles for one’s ten beans—in
which case, of course, some bidder who
waited too long went without anything.

Just as Katherine Foster took her place as
auctioneer, Mr. Huntington went out of the room
and came back in a few minutes with a curious,
awkward looking bundle, very small and done up
in brown wrapping paper, which he laid among
the other flaunting offerings. Few of the girls
noticed his action in the confusion of finding
good floor space to sit on, but Peggy saw his
hand drop the queer little package and she determined
then and there to bid on it, so that he
would think the girls wanted his article as well
as those they had brought for each other.

Rows and rows of eager figures seated on the
floor in spite of crisp taffeta and pretty satin
gowns, raised flushed faces toward the auctioneer
as she lifted the first package with maddening
deliberation and read its advertisement,

   | “Whatever young girl looks at me
   | Something bright and fair will see.”

The wrapping was the gayest of red tissue paper
and the spangled ribbon that went around
it made it seem the most desirable affair the girls
had ever looked at.

“Two beans—” shouted Florence Thomas
joyously.

.. File: 087.png

“Ladies and—and gentleman in the singular—”
cried the auctioneer, “I am insulted by
the offer of two beans—*two—insignificant—white—beans*—for
this gorgeous and inspiring
package, with goodness knows what all inside.
Now come, friends, hasn’t some young lady the
wish to—” she consulted the advertisement
attached to the bundle again, “to see something
bright and fair?”

“Five beans!” offered Daphne Damon from
the back row of bidders.

“Going—going—” began the auctioneer,
when Mrs. Forest, who had chosen a big armchair,
from which to view the proceedings,
rather than the floor, woke up to sudden interest
in disposing of her beans, and ignoring the
specification of the first part of the package’s
announcement, called out condescendingly, “Ten
beans!”

Of course nobody could bid any higher than
that and the prize was knocked down to “that
lady over there, with the black silk dress and the
diamond earrings.”

Amid a breathless silence Mrs. Forest unwrapped
her purchase and disclosed an attractive
little vanity mirror,—but, oh, for the faith
that you can put in advertisements,—when she
held it before her face and looked at it she didn’t
see anything bright and fair at all!

The auctioneer’s voice was already announcing
the next article. This was an alluring thing in
green tissue.

“Somebody’s heart and soul was in this,”
Katherine read out impressively from its advertisement.

Florence Thomas bid it in for seven beans and
opened it to find the sole of a worn out slipper
and a heart-shaped candy box.

The pile steadily dwindled but Katherine did
not pick up Mr. Huntington’s package until near
the end. It certainly did not look inviting.
Peggy’s heart gave a bound as it was lifted high
in the air and the auctioneer began to praise
it. She felt so sorry for Mr. Huntington that
he did not know how to make his offering as
attractive as theirs. She was sure nobody would
bid their last few beans on that when there
were still several delectable looking bundles on
the table. And, to make it worse, the inscription
that was supposed to extol its virtues merely
said, “This isn’t worth as much as people think.”
Why, mercy, no one in his right senses could
think it worth *anything* done up so roughly as
that! In a swift generous impulse Peggy bid
“Ten beans!” in a loud voice, and with a glance
of surprise and pity, Auctioneer Katherine
handed her the prize in silence.

Peggy rather hesitated to open the poor little
thing there before them all, but, glancing up,
she saw Mr. Huntington’s eyes upon her with
a curiously bright gaze. Something about the
anticipation in his look reassured her and she
tore off the wrapping hastily at last. There was
a red cigarette box inside and she blushed furiously.

“I guess this was meant for the one man of
our party,” Florence said, peering over her shoulder
and tapping it humorously.

But Peggy was beginning to be certain that
the box had only been used because it was the
right size and that there was something—possibly
even something interesting—inside. Gingerly
she lifted the cover and drew out two slips
of paper folded, then unwrinkling them on her
knee she looked down and gasped, while a wave
of brighter crimson swept over her face.

The first was a check for five thousand dollars!
It was made out to Andrews, with a ticket
attached saying, “For the new gymnasium.” The
other was a check for one hundred dollars made
out to bearer, with a note to explain, “for use
in giving other people kind little parties as you
all have to-day given me!”

What did it mean? Peggy stared across at
her friend, and found him smiling delightedly
that she had been the one to bid it in. *Poor* Mr.
Huntington! Never again could they call him
that—why, why—Mr. Huntington was *rich*, fabulously
and wonderfully and *generously* rich, and
they had never known. Through her mind flitted
the memory of his remark about the recurring
rumors that caused people to come to him in
search of donations to various things. Again
she thought of that odd phrase of his, “When one
is piling up one’s fortune—”

“Oh,” she gasped, the deliciousness of their
“charity” party sweeping over her. “Oh, how
strange everything is all of a sudden! I think,
perhaps, I’m asleep or something, this is just the
crazy, impossible way things go in dreams. Florence,
please pinch me.”

But when Florence did, she yelled “Ouch” in
a voice that was wide awake enough, so she
knew those uncanny checks in her hands were
real.

“The gymnasium is to be named Parson’s
Hall,” smiled Mr. Huntington, “that’s the condition,
and it’s really to be Peggy’s gift to the
school. The school would never have had it—that
is from me—on any other score. The small
check is Peggy’s own—and I waited until I saw
your eyes watching me, child, before I laid the
package on the table, for I hoped you’d be the
one to bid for it out of the kindness of your
heart.”

Mrs. Forest had turned pale at the mention
“gymnasium” and now she jumped from her
chair and made her way to Peggy’s side with an
almost youthful alacrity.

.. File: 093.png

“How—wonderful, how delightful, how kind,
how thoughtful, how perfectly splendid,” she
cried, reading the check with dazzled eyes. “Mr.
Huntington, I thank—”

“Thank Peggy,” he said, somewhat shortly and
walked over to the fireplace.

Peggy’s heart was full of happiness. To be
able to give something to Andrews that would
last always and would bear her name!

How beautiful that was! This school that
had already meant so much to her in friendships
and worth while knowledge not all out of books,—how
very glad she would be to come back to
it some day and see the neat little gymnasium,
with her name on the building, full of romping
girls that loved each other as she and Katherine
did, and had the same glorious, care-free outlook
on life that she had now!

“I wish I could say—half of what I’m thinking,” she
murmured, looking gratefully up at
Mr. Huntington with moist eyes.

He merely smiled. “Or I wish that *I* myself
could, after a day like to-day,” he answered after
a time.

A kind of quiet settled down on the girls and
they talked in low pitched voices, laughing only
in a comfortable undertone while the sense of
homelikeness and good feeling grew and grew
and struck deeply into each heart, bringing those
inner visions that belong to Thanksgiving day,
but need just the right atmosphere to make them
perfect.

Sixty separate groups of dear home people
were being vividly pictured in that one great
room, sixty different houses were suddenly mentally
erected within that house. Ever and ever
so many beloved voices were imagined right in
among the murmuring *real* voices of the friends
about them.

.. File: 095.png

And, contradictory as it may seem, keeping
pace with their happy contentment in the moment
went a big, aching, sweeping longing in
each girl’s mind for just one minute in mother’s
arms, one instant of her dear, real, understanding
presence. And from under sixty pairs of
lashes bright tear drops were fought back, while
each girl, wrapped up in her own heart-ache, believed
that she alone was experiencing anything
like this and that the others were all as free from
such homeward thoughts as they had been when
screaming with laughter a few hours ago over
the grinds in the dining-room.

Thus all our experiences we go through much
more in common with the rest of mankind than
we suppose. But this is especially so in school
and college, where a great number of young
people of the same age and of more or less the
same station in life are placed in exactly similar
environment. The same tears, the same laughter, the
same desires and the same satisfactions
all girls who have gone away to school have felt
in varying degree. And now here sat this roomful
of girls, each suffering in the same new and
unexpected way at the same time and each believing
her mental situation to be strangely different
from anything ever experienced in the
world before.

The spell had even affected Mrs. Forest, too,
for when she rose to gather up her flock she gave
a great sigh and spoke with a curious gentleness
that the girls had never associated with
her pompous tones.

“I think, young ladies, it is time we went back
to our school, now. And I’m sure we’ll join
in thanking Mr. Huntington for the best time
we have had this season. And we are very
grateful for his most kind gift to Andrews. If
he would care to come to our school musicales
and entertainments nobody would be a more welcome guest
than he. Get your wraps, young
ladies, and we will take our departure.”

The girls scrambled up from the floor and
went reluctantly to the hall, where they slipped
into great fur coats, and fastened rubbers on
their daintily shod feet.

“Good-by, good-by,” they called from the door,
and troops and troops of them went down the
whitened walk, laughing back expressions of appreciation.

Peggy had whispered in Mrs. Forest’s ear just
as she was about to leave, and Mrs. Forest had
nodded her head graciously. So Peggy went
to Katherine and drew her back from the crowds
of those preparing to go home, and when the
rest had gone the two girls went back to the
fire and sat down in great arm-chairs on either
side of it, while Mr. Huntington mused into the
blue flames and began to see there a picture of
something that had happened long ago.

.. File: 098.png

“So you want to hear why I have to be alone
on Thanksgiving day unless outsiders take pity
on me, do you?” he asked, for Peggy had
begged him at the door to tell her about his
daughter and the grandson that would be older
than she. It was daring, but she felt very strongly
that someway Mr. Huntington wanted to talk,
wanted to tell someone, and she believed she and
Katherine and he were good enough friends now
to make it possible for him to tell his story to
them.

“Well,” hesitated the old man— The girls
settled themselves more comfortably in the great
chairs and leaned forward, their chins in their
hands, while the whimsical light of the fire played
over them now in rose-colored flickers of light,
now in lavender brilliance.

“I suppose I’d better begin at the beginning,”
said Mr. Huntington, and in a quiet, halting,
reminiscent voice began his strange story.

.. File: 099.png

CHAPTER VII—MR. HUNTINGTON’S STORY
==================================

“Our family has always been rich,—I cannot
remember when the Huntingtons were not supposed
to have everything they wanted. I myself
have not let the great estates of my ancestors
slip through my fingers as the people
about here imagine. Instead,—it may surprise
you—I am richer far than any Huntington has
ever been before.”

Peggy gave a delighted little gasp.

“Yes, because the values of my holdings have
gone right on increasing and I have used practically
nothing for myself, you see. People outside
think that no man would appear to be poor
as I do, with none of the luxuries of life, and
really be rich, for the common rule is the other
way, isn’t it? Even at the cost of mortgaging
house and home most people buy the outward
shows of wealth in order to seem to be rich even
though they are poor.

“My daughter was the most beautiful girl in
the state when she was young. Her mother died
when she was eighteen and so just as she began
to want parties and entertainments I was obliged
to do all the planning and looking after her myself.
Lovely as she was, and rich beyond the
dreams of neighborhood avarice, I naturally
thought she would marry some kingly young fellow
with a position equal to her own. But she
didn’t—she married—”

He looked for a long time into the fire, and
Peggy ventured to break the silence, “but that
wasn’t a very democratic way of looking at
things, was it? Don’t you believe a rich girl
might like a very poor man, and the other way
round, too?”

.. File: 101.png

“She married, with my reluctant consent, a
young fellow who immediately tried to get me to
sell off great portions of my property and turn
the money over to him for investment in some
crazy oil well he had out west. He tried in every
way to get control of this or that piece, using
fraudulent means, it seemed to me. Finally he—borrowed
a vast sum of money from a man down
state—it was easy for anyone so safely connected
with the Huntington family to borrow whatever
he wanted—and this he sank in the well, which
never amounted to anything and gave him no
means of paying even the interest on his debt.
With the interest greatly overdue, and no prospects,
howsoever dim, of getting back his money,
the rash investor from down state came to me
and demanded that I reimburse him for my son-in-law’s
rascality—though perhaps that is too
strong a word to use.”

.. File: 102.png

“And you did—*didn’t* you?” begged Peggy,
anxiously.

“Of course,” agreed her friend. “He knew I
would, though he never mentioned the transaction
to me himself, but left the news for his
creditor to break.

“They lived with me here five years and when
my little grandson was two years old, I planned
how I could do the most for him, arranging his
education and travels in my mind so that all the
bright future I had hoped for my daughter might
be realized in him. But when incidents like the
one I just told you of began to happen frequently
and any considerable sum of money I gave my
daughter went also into the stupid oil proposition
that never yielded any profits or, indeed, paid
back a cent of the money that it ate, I determined
to go on with the thing no longer and talked
to my daughter and my son-in-law so plainly that
they agreed to go away and not involve me in
such transactions again.”

Katherine timidly interrupted, “I suppose they—didn’t
write much after they’d gone?” She
was still puzzling to account for the complete
loneliness the old man had endured for so many
years—even the conduct of his disappointing
son-in-law did not, to her mind, wholly explain
why a man would be content to forego all manner
of acquaintance and friendship ever afterward.

The fire crackled loudly and protestingly, as if
it, too, shared her thought and would like an
explanation. Peggy never stirred nor moved
her eyes from the thoughtful and sympathetic
contemplation of Mr. Huntington’s face.

“No,” the old man hesitatingly answered
Katherine. “No—You see—, well, I am afraid
I spoke very harshly to the man and my daughter
heard. He made no kind of defense whatever
and—even then I—I was ashamed, but I knew
right to be on my side and I felt very long-suffering
as it was. My daughter caught up my
grandson and faced me. I shall never forget the
proud expression in her poor, hurt eyes.”

“‘You shall be paid back every penny, father,’
she said, ‘if you have to wait until this baby
grows up and earns enough to cancel his father’s
debts. It is not likely we could meet so great
an obligation by our own unaided efforts—and
Jo is not a moneymaker, but my son shall be
trained to think of nothing but making money
until the whole amount is ready to return to
you. We shan’t send you little dribbles,—not
one cent until the entire amount is gotten together—oh,
I know how much it is, I have kept
track. We shall scrimp and save and earn and
plan until you are paid. Nor will you ever hear
of us again if I can help it until my son stands
some day in your doorway with his check in his
hand to pay you back.’ And with that they went
away—”

“And they haven’t ever paid you back? And
that is why you were poor for so long?” questioned
Katherine, believing that at last she had
the solution.

Mr. Huntington smiled at the absurdity of
this.

“They haven’t paid me back, but the sum they
owe me scarcely leaves a perceptible hole in my
fortune. No, but the year after they left I happened
to read the notice in a New York paper
of my son-in-law’s death. No address was given,
nothing but just the notice and that was all.
Knowing my daughter as I did, I was sure that,
at whatever cost, she would persevere in her determination
to pay me back and would keep to the
letter of her declaration even to the point of going
out into the world and earning her own living.
The thought of that beautiful, carefully
brought-up girl, with so harrowing a responsibility
on her shoulders was more than I could
bear and I employed detective agents in a vain
endeavor to find her and her boy. I myself
searched everywhere in the east, but, will you
believe me—never from the day she left my house
to this—have I found one trace of her or been
encouraged, in any way to hope that I should ever
see her face again. Now do you begin to understand?
Now can you think it natural, perhaps,
that I should want to live as poorly as possible,
and deny myself as I knew that poor girl was
doing? Could I continue in luxury when she was
in want? Only by making myself suffer under
the most rigid economy, with the idea that every
penny I could save and add to my fortune I would
bequeath to her boy, in case he could ever be
found, has made my life possible to endure. I
have felt bitterly toward almost everyone—I
don’t know why. And I never expected to have
in my life again the sunshine that you and the
rest of my sixty little friends, have brought to
me to-day.”

Peggy drew a long breath. “Well, it’s been a
real Thanksgiving, then, hasn’t it? And I’m so
glad, Mr. Huntington, I’m so glad you liked the
party—and I—I—I’m sorry about—”

“Do you know,” Katherine broke in, “I think
it’s all coming out right. I never had such a
funny feeling. But someway I seem to be sure
that Mr. Huntington will find his grandson right
soon—I don’t know why I should feel this way,
but I do.”

“Cassandra,” murmured Peggy. “We’re just
having the Fall of Troy in Greek class now, Mr.
Huntington, and Katherine is carried away by
the idea of being a prophetess. It *would* be nice
if we could see the future,” she added wistfully,
“but I always feel as if I had more happiness
in the present than I could really take care of,—and
if I was always looking ahead to more—”

“You,” said Mr. Huntington, “yes, *you* would
feel that way. Most people would say that the
gift of prophecy was withheld from us in order
that we might not see so much grief and hardship
ahead of us that we would lose the incentive
to go on.”

But Peggy was so far out of sympathy with
that point of view that she laughed.

The early darkness of the winter afternoon
began to deepen in the room and blur all the
shadows together. The dancing firelight did its
best to fight off the dusk, leaping up with spurting
little flames and glowing fiercely red at its
heart. But the purple and gray twilight deepened
steadily into black everywhere except in
the one bright corner of the room where the
flames still kept guard.

“Well,” said Peggy, sighing, and untangling
herself from the comfortable chair in which she
had been curled, “time for us to go home, I suppose—oo—oo—out
into all that cold after all
this warmth! My hundred dollars, Mr. Huntington—I
don’t know what I’ll do with it—”
she puckered her brow thoughtfully, “I don’t
know anyone else to give a party to so—”

“Buy a big fur coat with it, like some of the
other girls wore,” advised the old man, “then
you’ll never think about going out into the cold
as anything but a pleasure.”

“Oh,—a fur coat!” cried Peggy, “why, mine—mine
has just the mangiest bit of a fur collar,
and I’ve been proud enough of that—wait, just
*wait* till I get a wonderful young caracal!”

With their hands linked closely together in
Peggy’s muff the two girls made their way down
the walk, and at the street they turned back and
waved cheerily to the silhouetted figure that still
watched them against the glowing doorway of
what had once been Gloomy House.

.. File: 110.png

CHAPTER VIII—CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS
===============================

The days and weeks seemed to fly by after that,
each one full of interest to Peggy, who liked
Andrews better and better and was increasingly
glad each hour that she had come. Through
Mr. Huntington’s help she was able to do a great
many delightful things for other people, and she
took happy advantage of his warm interest in
her projects.

December rushed along toward Christmas and
Peggy began to feel just a trifle sad because her
aunt had written nothing about her coming home
for the holidays, while almost all the other girls
were going. She rather hated to think of the
empty halls of Andrews in vacation time with
no company other than that of Mrs. Forest. But
one day Katherine had looked beamingly up from
a letter and had then jumped up and thrown her
arms around Peggy’s neck with the explanation
that Peggy was invited home with her by all of
Katherine’s folks.

Oh, what an enthusiastic preparation began
then, what long discussions as to whether to take
the blue crêpe de chine or the golden satin, what
oodles of postcards were dispatched to friends
with the good news and new temporary address
on them!

To be part of the great business of going away
for vacation! Peggy’s heart thrilled every time
an expressman tramped through the halls bearing
some girl’s trunk on his broad shoulders.
Any afternoon now they might come for her
trunk, hers and Katherine’s, packed delightfully
in one, after many friendly quarrels as to which
one should have the left hand tray and which the
right and who could lay her shoes in the lower
compartment and which should take her manicure
set, since one would do for both girls, and
trunk room was precious.

When, seated at last, breathless and full of
anticipation, in a taxi with their trunk up on
top, the two girls waved through the window to
those who had not yet gone, Peggy was too happy
to speak, and two bright red spots burned in her
dimpling cheeks and her eyes were as blue with
excitement as electric sparks.

She had never ridden on a train—a Pullman—before
with just girls as company. Her aunt
had always taken her the few places she had
been. Yet now she was actually buying her ticket
herself and checking her trunk, and then boarding
a great, wonderful, cross-country de luxe
train,—she and Katherine, all by themselves,
with as grown-up *sang-froid* as if they had “all
the while been conductors or brakemen,” Katherine
expressed it joyously.

.. File: 113.png

The porter put their suit-cases under their
berths, and Peggy’s little gloved hand dropped
a quarter nonchalantly into his palm while she
tried to twist her eager, excited mouth into a
traveled expression.

“Well,” murmured Katherine, settling back
comfortably on the plush seat, “we’re really on
our way. Oh, Peggy, I’m so glad you’re going
with me—oh, won’t it be fun to introduce you
to father and mother and brother Jack and the
canary bird!”

They had taken an early afternoon train, and
it was a long while to wait for dinner. The wonder
and glory of the dinner Peggy was already
picturing.

“I’m hungry just thinking about it,” she said,
when the train was well under way.

“Let’s have the porter get us something,” suggested
Katherine, “what would you like—a lemonade?”

.. File: 114.png

“OO-ooo,” breathed Peggy, rapturously, “can
he get it for us?”

“Why, you can order *anything* on these good
trains,” declared Katherine grandly. “A little
later we’ll get some cards and look up two girls
to play bridge—the train’s full of our girls and
people from the colleges. Then we’ll go back to
the observation car and—”

Peggy shivered blissfully. “My,” she said,
“isn’t life full of experiences, though?”

-----

“Shall we wear our hats into the diner,
Peggy?” asked Katherine, importantly, when the
windows of the train were squares of blackness
speckled by flying snow whirling past and the
waiter had gone through calling out, “Dinner is
served in the dining car in the rear ... first-call.”

“Is that the thing to do?” hesitated Peggy—“and
must we wear our coats, too? I’d rather
put our hats into these paper hat bags the porter
brought a while ago, and leave our coats here,
and—and just go back in a real homelike appearance.”

“All right,” said Katherine, smoothing back
her pretty hair before the tiny oblong mirror in
their section, “and, oh, Peggy, how hungry I
am!”

With the excitement of a brand new experience
shining in their eyes, their youthful heads held
erect as they walked, and their little serge skirts
swishing over their silk petticoats, the two girls
went down the aisle in growing and pleasant consciousness
of being observed by many, through
car after car of the long train in their hungry
search for the diner.

Each of the vestibules was snow-powdered
and slippery and cold—oh, so cold, and it seemed
that always just as they came to one the train
lurched and shook so as to nearly knock them
off their feet.

And then, all of a sudden, there they were in
the diner itself—but what was this mob—this
perfect horde of other people doing there standing
patiently lined up against the long narrow
wall before they came to the table part of the
car?

“Katherine!” cried Peggy in consternation,
“they’re waiting to get in. We’ll *starve* before
our turn comes!”

And all the long patient row of people laughed,
for nowhere else in traveling is there a more
open and friendly spirit than among those poor
patient and hungry sufferers lined up to wait
their turn to be served at dinner. Groups returning
began to push by them after a while,
their faces as satisfied in expression as the others
were anxious.

“You see,” Katherine thought it out, “we came
at the first call, but our car was so far away that
by the time we could get back here, all the people
from the nearer cars had gotten ahead of us.”

But once seated facing each other at a little
table, with the electric candle shedding its radiant
light on the white cloth before them, and with
the pale snow outside fluttering against the windows,
and all so warm and comfortable inside,
the tedium of waiting was forgotten and all
things beyond the scope of the immediate attractive
present were blotted out from their contented
spirits.

They leaned their elbows on the table and
looked across at each other with blissful satisfaction.

“Peggy,” said Katherine, and “Katherine,” began
Peggy eagerly, and then both in the same
breath they demanded of each other the answer
to the momentous problem of the moment, “What
are we going to eat?”

.. File: 118.png

Never had a menu seemed as full of wonderful
possibilities as that one, never had “Milk-fed
chicken with Virginia ham” tasted finer when it
was brought, and never, *never* had two more
healthy young appetites been brought into play
than Katherine and Peggy manifested while the
train rocked along with them at breakneck speed
taking them faster and faster and faster right
into the heart of Christmas vacation.

After the edge of their hunger had been worn
off and they had turned their attention more delicately
to ice cream and *demi-tasse*, their thoughts
drifted backward to events at Andrews, which
seemed already very much in the dim and distant
past.

“Katherine, when you said you felt as if Mr.
Huntington would soon find his grandson, did
you have any reason for saying that, or was it
just to comfort him?” Peggy inquired reminiscently.

.. File: 119.png

“No, honestly, Peggy,” insisted Katherine, “I
could feel it in my mind just like anything that
it will happen. Did you notice I didn’t say anything
about his daughter? That was because
I had no such feeling about her—so you see it
wasn’t just to make him feel better at all. It’s
strange, isn’t it, how thoughts about the future
come to you sometimes?”

“Never do to me,” laughed Peggy with a shake
of her head. “Just think, Katherine, I didn’t
ever even have an idea until I actually saw you
that I was going to room with anyone like you
at Andrews. When I used to wonder what my
room-mate would be like, I always thought of
some—entirely different kind of a person—and
I was afraid maybe she’d want the window shut
when I wanted it open, or she’d be a grind and
I’d bother her,—and when I saw you—”

“Were you satisfied?” teased Katherine across
the table.

.. File: 120.png

“Oh—” sighed Peggy in mock rapture, and
then she smiled her sweet, frank, confident, dark-eyed
smile straight into her room-mate’s eyes.
“I was just about as glad as they make ’em,”
she declared.

Katherine was thinking.

After a while she spoke.

“I know what let’s do,” she said radiantly,
“let’s go to Madame Blakey when we get to my
house and ask her about the Huntington boy.”

“Who’s Madame Blakey?”

“Oh, I forgot you wouldn’t know. She’s a
clairvoyant and reads the future out of a little
glass of water. Yes, and you needn’t smile.
Sometimes it comes out just as she says. I’ve
never been, but some of the business men in our
town believe in every word she says.”

“I—I’d be afraid,” Peggy demurred.

“She doesn’t tell you the horrid things—just
the ones worth while knowing—don’t you think
it would be thrilling to go?” Katherine poised her
ice-cream spoon half way to her mouth while
she waited for Peggy’s wild delight in the scheme
which she felt sure must come.

“I—I—don’t know—” Peggy disappointingly
murmured. “Does she have curtains painted
with red and gold Turkish half-moons and all
that? And does she fade off into a—” she shuddered,
“a—trance? Because I don’t want to see
anything like that, honest, I don’t. Of course,
I know the trances are just make-believe, but I
don’t like them.”

“No,” Katherine hastened to reassure her,
“sometimes I think it would be fun to go to one
who did those things, but this one doesn’t make
much of a show of it, I’ve heard, and if the
folks would only let us go—”

“Perhaps we owe it to Mr. Huntington,” Peggy
decided at last, “to find out where his grandson
is for him, even by clairvoyant means like that.
Perhaps we ought not to let an opportunity or
possible chance slip by—”

By this Katherine realized she had won her
wish and that her little friend was beginning to
be as eager for the adventure as she was and was
merely trying to translate it into a favor to
somebody else before plunging into it heart and
soul.

By this time the girls had finished their delightful
dinner and they left a quarter on the waiter’s
little tray with all the dignity in the world. My,
how independent, how experienced, how completely
adult it made them feel to be deciding the
amount of tips and then handing them out with
such sweet grandeur of manner. The waiter
smiled and bowed as he pulled out their chairs,
but they themselves were so exactly the type
of traveler that any waiter would prefer to wait
on, with their grave consultation with him as
to the choicest dishes and their evident enjoyment
of life in general, that perhaps he would
have been nearly as polite had they given him
only ten cents—but, of course, it’s impossible to
say for sure. Waiters are but waiters, and
they have certain expectations and have grown
accustomed to seeing them realized.

Back on the perilous journey through snow-coated
vestibules the girls took their swaying
way, laughing light-heartedly at each swerve of
the train and trying to work out some Sherlock
Holmes system by which they might be sure
of finding their own car.

“I knew a girl once,” said Katherine, “whose
car was taken off at Buffalo and hitched to another
train while she was promenading on the
platform outside, and all the baggage she had
in the world went off to school, leaving her behind.
It was a horrible experience—”

“Must have been,” sniggered Peggy, “but if
you’re trying to scare me into thinking perhaps
we won’t find our car at all you’ll have a hard
time of it, because we’re in it now!”

And so they were. There were the familiar
fur coats over the arms of the Pullman seats
at last, there were the copies of the gayly covered
magazines that they had left behind them,
and, indeed, there it all was—home. Home as
only a Pullman car can be home to young people
who adore traveling and have plenty of interesting
experiences and company to while away the
journey.

“Ah,” they cried, sinking back into their seats,
“this is nice, isn’t it, after all that walk? How
smoothly the train runs when you’re sitting still,
but how jogglety it goes when you walk through
the cars.”

“Oh, well,” said Peggy, with a mighty yawn
and stretching her little locked hands before
her lazily, “I’m perfectly happy, and I feel so
contented I’m almost—sleepy.”

.. File: 125.png

“Almost—” indignantly laughed Katherine,
“I feel free to say that you’re the most perfect
imitation of a sleepy head that I ever saw—imitation,
I said, Peggy, imitation—” she
cried, ducking, for Peggy had reached for her
hair to pull it.

“Let’s imitate sleeping heads instead of only
sleepy ones then,” suggested Peggy when all her
attempts to wreak vengeance upon her room-mate
had proved unsuccessful.

“Porter, will you make up our section next?”
asked Katherine as that white-coated individual
went by. And Peggy stored it away in her mind
that when you wanted to address him you called
him “Porter.” It was difficult to explain exactly
why, but this impressed her as just the
highest mark of knowing the proper thing that
she had seen yet. Now if *she* had been forced
to ask him the same question she had a feeling
that she would have begun with “Say.”

.. File: 126.png

“How shall we sleep—you in the upper, or
me, or both of us in the lower so that the upper
needn’t be let down at all and then we can have
plenty of room to dress in our berths in the morning
without bumping our heads.”

Peggy agreed to this last plan as the best, and
a few minutes later the two snuggled down into
the cold sheets to be lulled almost instantly to
sleep by the rhythmic motion of the train and
the even sound of its metal click, click on the
rails.

“Good-night,” murmured Peggy sleepily just
before drifting off into the great shining world
of dreams with their marvelous adventures that
do not tire but rest and equip the dreamer afresh
for the series of real events crowding in with
the new day.

“Goo—ood—night—” answered Katherine
in an even drawlier tone, but her room-mate was
already asleep and did not notice it.

.. File: 127.png

CHAPTER IX—THE FORTUNE TELLER
=============================

Oh, the glory of waking up in the morning
and then before you have time to wonder where
you are, seeing the telegraph poles flying by! On
a train, on a train, on a train, Peggy’s joyous
thought kept time to the sound of the wheels
on the rails. After looking interestedly out
for a few minutes on a barren sort of white
crusted country, level as a prairie and without
house or building of any kind, Peggy turned and
shook Katherine heartily by the shoulder.

“Poor child,” she shouted into the other’s reluctant
ears, “I hate to waken you, but open
your eyes and tell me if you think we’re nearly
there?”

.. File: 128.png

“Where?” murmured Katherine and sank back
into the peace of slumber.

“Why, there, THERE, at your home—will—you—wake—up?”
Each of the last words was
accompanied by more vigorous shaking, “as—I—said—”
shake, shake, “I—hate—to—waken—you—”

“Yes, you do,” reproached Katherine in perfectly
normal tones, turning staring mockingly
at her room-mate. “Yes, you hate it—I thought
you were a wreck, you shook me so hard.”

“I am a wreck after all that difficulty to make
you wake up,” declared Peggy serenely. “Now,
let’s hurry and go to breakfast.”

“Do you know what your new name is going
to be as soon as we get back to school?” threatened
Katherine.

“No,” indifferently.

“Pig Peggy.”

“Oh,” said Peggy, “well, I’ll look you up one
in the dictionary,—maybe in the *Latin* dictionary,
and then you’ll never know what it means
and can’t pay me back for it.”

It is surprising how quickly two girls can be
ready for breakfast when they hear the waiter
crying out “Last—call for breakfast—”
through a rocking train.

Grape-fruit, coffee, and toast was what they
ordered, and then they laughed to find that every
other girl in the diner was eating exactly the
same thing. For grape-fruit, coffee, and toast
is the college and school girl train-breakfast the
country over.

“I feel as if I’d been away a hundred years,”
said Katherine excitedly as the train at last pulled
into the station. “Oh, they’ll all be down at the
train, I wired them to. And how proud I’ll be
to show them you, Peggy, and tell them that
you are the one they’ve heard so much about in
all my letters since the very first, which was full
of your rose-tree episode.”

The porter had already gone ahead with their
bags, and they, peering eagerly out of the windows
as they made their way to the platform,
sought to catch a glimpse of Katherine’s family.

As they stepped off it seemed to Peggy that a
veritable whirlpool engulfed them. On every side
were enthusiastic people kissing her and Katherine
indiscriminately. And she in her gladness
to get there and her happiness in meeting with
such friendly acceptance kissed them back with
impartial enthusiasm, Katherine’s mother and
father, her younger sister, an aunt, and three
“kid brothers”—these were the reception committee
that were now hustling the girls to the
big waiting automobile that belonged to Katherine’s
father and overwhelming them with expressions
of pleasure and welcome.

.. File: 131.png

The house, when they came to it, was a great
homey affair, with many rich rugs and pictures
that did not, however, dazzle by their magnificence
but seemed to fit into the general atmosphere
of comfort. Peggy, who had never visited
in so wonderful a place before, danced from attic
to cellar, as light as thistledown, and sent the
whole family into roars of appreciative laughter
at her naïve and hearty approval of it all.

“You’re home, now, Peggy,” Katherine said.

And Peggy nodded happily. “Why, of
course,” was her comment. “It certainly feels
like it, and I *love* every darling member of your
perfectly grand family, Katherine Foster.”

Two days after their arrival the Fosters had
a Christmas party for them, and for the first
time in her life Peggy helped to trim a Christmas
tree, and wrap up such an enormous number
of tiny tissue-covered bundles that her fingers
ached from tying string.

.. File: 132.png

There was the grand march around the tree,
the gorgeous Christmas supper, and afterward
dancing and dancing and dancing until Peggy’s
head whirled and her very heart beat time to music.

On Christmas day there came for each of the
girls a fascinating little package bearing the
Huntington address on the outside. Katherine’s
was a woven gold chain with a delicate and beautiful
pearl pendant attached, and Peggy’s was a
watch with a good sized diamond sparkling in
its handwrought gold.

“Oh—how *lovely*,” breathed she in ecstatic
surprise, and then suddenly her face clouded.
“We forgot to send him a thing,” she reminded
contritely.

“Never mind,” comforted Katherine, “we’ll go
to the clairvoyant and help get his grandson
back for him and I guess that will mean more
to him than any little set of cuff links or knitted
tie we might have given him.”

“So we will,” mused Peggy, “do you think
we could go to-morrow?”

Not the morrow, but the day before New
Year’s finally saw Katherine’s family persuaded
to let the two girls go to Madame Blakey, who
had really a considerable reputation in the town
for correctly reading futures in her glass of
water. Not that Katherine’s father and mother
believed in that sort of thing, but they actually
knew people who seemed to, and they could see
no harm in permitting the girls to go. But when
the two daring experimenters with things yet to
come had been conveyed by James, the chauffeur,
in their big touring car to the residence of
Madame, they found all the blinds closed and
no sign of life about the place anywhere. A
woman from next door told them that Madame
Blakey had gone away on her vacation to visit
relatives.

“Well,” sighed Katherine in miserable disappointment,
“I suppose other people have to have
vacations too. But it does seem heartbreaking
that all our plans should be spoiled and poor Mr.
Huntington should never find his grandson, after
all.”

“Yes,” agreed Peggy, brushing away the baffled
tears, “isn’t there somebody else in town who—who
sees things ahead?”

“Oh,” objected Katherine, “not that mother
would let us go to—but listen, we might go first
and then explain all about it and she’d understand
our motive. Let’s look in the personals
of the newspaper. Sometimes there is one advertised
there.”

So they sent James for a paper and eagerly
scanned its columns until they found in inviting,
bold type, “Madame La Mar, palmist and
clairvoyant. I read the future: I tell your past:
consult me about your business or your heart affairs.”

“Ah,” cried Katherine, and she read the address
to James, while she squeezed Peggy’s hand
under the heavy robe.

A few minutes later the machine had drawn
up before a frowsy little apartment building,
very different from and far less prepossessing
than the neat, newly painted little house of Madame
Blakey’s.

In spite of James’ expression of mild surprise,
the two girls got out and entered the building,
searching as they did so for some card or call
board by which they might locate Madame La
Mar’s rooms. There was no lock system on the
doors and no cards of residents. They went on
into the main hall and saw a row of uninviting
doors, each with some name scrawled on it in
pencil. On one door alone was a soiled visiting
card bearing the proud name of Madame La
Mar.

“Do you dare knock?” asked Katherine.

“Maybe I will in a—in a minute,” hesitated
Peggy. “Don’t you think perhaps we’d better
have James in?”

“No,” said Katherine, “he’s right out there,
anyway, and could hear us if we wanted him for
anything, and this apartment must face the
street, so we could lean out and call him if it gets
too trancified for us in there.”

But they did not have to work up their courage
to the point of forcing themselves to knock
on the door, for the great Madame La Mar herself,
hearing their whispering voices, now threw
it open and stood before them in all the magnificence
of tight fitting black velvet embroidered
with occasional sequins that glittered here and
there.

She was a big woman with vivid black eyes
and black hair turning in places to gray. Her
cheeks bloomed with an unnatural radiance, and
her eyebrows were the longest and the most
arched and the most charcoal dusky that Peggy
had ever seen off the stage.

“Ah,” crooned a honeyed voice, “did you want
to see me?”

Katherine, speechless, nodded.

“Was it about—did you want a reading?”
There was a very professional business-like quality
now creeping into the voice in addition to
its first honeyed accents.

“Yes,” Peggy answered up.

“Did you have an appointment or have you
ever come to me before?” temporized the woman.

“No,” said Peggy, “but we thought—we
thought you might be willing to see us anyway.”

“Yes, yes, indeed, come in,” said the woman
vaguely. “Come in and we will have a little music.”

.. File: 138.png

The girls were seated, full of bewilderment, in
a sunny, rather vacant room, while the seeress
swished across the floor like an animated mountain
and, going over to a piano on which the dust
shone, sat down and began to play a simple exercise
like those Peggy had practiced when she
was a child and had her fingers rapped if she
made a mistake.

In increasing wonderment the two watched the
self-confident figure picking out its little exercise
and apparently completely oblivious of their presence
and as thrilled by the feeble tinkle, tinkle
it was accomplishing, as if the sound were a
whole orchestra of beautiful music.

After a time she stopped, and turned to the
girls with a small smile. “I like music,” she
said. “Oh, so fond of music. I’m taking lessons.”

“She needs ’em,” whispered Katherine.

.. File: 139.png

“Did you enjoy my little roundelay?” she inquired
anxiously.

“It was—it was very nice,” Peggy tried to say
politely. “But we thought you were Madame
La Mar, the fortune teller.”

“I *am* Madame La Mar,” responded the
woman, as pleased as peaches. “Yes, indeed,
who else could be her, you know?”

“Her grammar!” groaned Katherine in a tiny
voice.

“Now if you will come into the studio,” the
woman urged, “I will read for you from the past,
present or future or all three of them. Just state
your desires.”

“There was something special,” Peggy told
her, “we thought you might be able to read
ahead for us.”

“Of course,” agreed the generous creature,
“anything. But my charge is a dollar a person.”

.. File: 140.png

“That’s all right.”

“Then come in. Now the young lady in the
caracal coat sit on my left, please, and you other
on my right. I shall want you to keep very still
and not disturb the workings of the supernatural.
Which would you rather have me do, tell
you by cards or by your palm or by the crystal?”

“Will—will one be just as effective as the
other?” asked Peggy doubtfully.

“Be as what?”

“Be as effective, as good, you know, Madame
La Mar.”

“Oh, yes,” explained the seeress condescendingly.
“I can tell it one way as well as another
and I never make a mistake. I’m not like some
of these people in this town—limited, you know,
to a single style. You can choose any sort whatever
and it goes with me. I’m a woman of my
word, I am,” her voice was rising, “and I challenge
any other clarvoy’nt in this town to tell
as much for the money as I do, why—”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure,” pacified Peggy. “And
now suppose you tell us something. It’s what
we came for.”

“With the crystal,” Katherine put in, “and
maybe our palms too.”

“No, not our palms,” cried Peggy in consternation,
looking at the rather dirty red hands
of the husky fortune teller. “I think the crystal
alone is best.”

“Well, then.” The red hands caught up a little
crystal globe that was lying on the table. “All
look into this with me, just as hard as you can,”
she urged, “and think with all your might about
the question you want me to solve for you, and
pretty soon I’ll see things come in here and that
will be the future.”

The room settled down to a curious, stifling,
nerve-racking silence while the prophetess gazed
into her gleaming crystal.

She was breathing hard, and after a time
it seemed to the two girls that a faint film or
cloud went across the glassy brightness of the
little globe, and this filminess took vague shape
and disappeared.

Each girl thought as hard as she could. “How
can we find Mr. Huntington’s grandson for him?
Where is he now?”

Finally, in a sepulchral voice, startlingly different
from her own, the woman began to speak:
“I see a girl,” she murmured.

This beginning was so far from promising and
so utterly different from what they had someway
expected that Katherine burst out into hysterical
laughter. “She could see two of ’em if she
looked very hard,” she chortled too audibly in
her friend’s ear.

“There, you’ve broken the spell,” complained
the woman peevishly. “How can you expect me
to find the future for a pack of laughing hyenas
that don’t believe what I’m telling them, anyway?”

“Oh, please,” said Peggy, much ashamed of
Katherine’s rude outburst, “we want to hear it,
and we will perhaps believe it when we have
heard something. Indeed, Katherine wasn’t
doubting what you *did* say, you know—she
only—”

“Quiet,” hissed the woman.

Was it true that a cloud, filmy and light and
vapory went drifting across the clear crystal surface
again? The girls felt no impulse to laugh
now.

“I see a girl—I see snow—”

Katherine thought that she couldn’t help it if
she looked out of the window, but this time refrained
from comment and held her breath while
she watched the mysterious smoky appearance
of the crystal.

“I see a loss of a long time ago—many years—relative
torn from relative—”

Peggy and Katherine clutched at each other’s
knees.

“Walking, walking, so tired,” mumbled the
woman, “a long white field. I see an initial—let’s
see what the initial is. Is it A? no, it is not
A. Is it B—no, no, now I have it, it is H.”

Peggy gave a tiny scream and the voice continued:

“Cold, very cold, far east of here and a little
north. A college room, a mandolin, a young
man plays on the mandolin. Also I see—” the
voice rose excitedly, “a school lawn, a moon, this
time it is warm, I do not understand it, and a
group of young men are picking up little—little
roses from the ground, and a girl leans from
a window—”

.. File: 145.png

“Peggy,” screamed Katherine, “she means the
time the rose tree fell out.”

Here the prophetess burst into tears and shoving
the crystal away from her declared that she
would not read another thing for two such ill
mannered young ladies who dragged her in and
out of her trances just as if these were not the
worst kind of nervous strain. She was through
with them, she was. Just as she was beginning
to see something of interest they shouted at her
and spoiled it all. What kind of spirits would
remain in a room with two girls that acted like
that? They could pay her their dollar apiece,
they could, and go, and she would go back to
her music and think herself well rid of them,
she was sure. Thank them, and *good-by*, and
please don’t ever come and bother her again with
their hoydenish ways. Could they find their way
to the street? She, for her part, was too unnerved
to take them.

.. File: 146.png

With their heads still whirling from the queerness
of it all the two girls groped their way out
through the dark hall and drew in great breaths
when they were once more safe in the sunlight
of the street. They stumbled forward toward
the car, where the imperturbable James was
awaiting them. As they were about to clamber
in Peggy clutched at her room-mate’s sleeve.

“Look back, she’s watching us,” warned
Peggy, and there sure enough in the window
of the room they had just quitted were the outlines
of the great figure of the black velvet
prophetess, a curious brilliant fixedness in her
dark eyes.

“I think she got her initial from the door of
your car, Katherine—look.”

Katherine’s father’s initials were H. B. F.,
Howard Baker Foster, and of course the seeress
could have seen them, looking down into the
street as she was now.

.. File: 147.png

“Maybe,” demurred Katherine, “but, Peggy,
someway I don’t believe she did. I think that
H stood for Huntington just as all the rest of
her story seemed to have some truth in it, and
if only my feelings hadn’t gotten away with me
we’d be there yet, hearing all the things that
are ever going to happen to us, I’m perfectly convinced.”

“Well, evidently, Young Grandson is in college
somewhere,” interposed Peggy flippantly.
“You remember about the college room and the
mandolin? I’m glad that his poverty didn’t prevent
his getting a fine education, anyway. Now
we’ve got a clue, all we have to do to find him,
friend Watson, is to go to all the men’s colleges
and walk through all the dorms until we come
to a room from which the gentle tinkle of a
mandolin steals forth—and then, and then—we
knock on the door. Young Grandson answers it,
and—there we are. We take him back to Mr.
Huntington and all goes well. And listen, Watson,
my dear detective companion, I think our
search through those colleges is just going to be
one of the jolliest things that ever happened to
two nice-looking girls.”

“You forget that we won’t know Young
Grandson when we see him.”

“Clues, my dear Watson, clues. No detective
ever went far without finding clues. First, we
shall run across his picture in one of the college
annuals. And we shall say, ‘Why, here, what a
strong resemblance this picture bears to Mr.
Huntington, of Huntington House.’ And that’s
the first thing. We read under the picture and
find that his name is John James Smith, and
then we go to the registrar—”

By this time the car was rounding the Foster
drive, and the two girls alighted, in haste to tell
all of Katherine’s interested and somewhat
disapproving family about their adventures with
the soothsayer.

Each of the small brothers agreed with Katherine
that it must be all true, but that was the
only support she found at home for her belief.

-----

When it came time for the girls to start back
to Andrews, they were torn with conflicting emotions.
They were glad they were going back,
and yet they could hardly bear to tear themselves
away from the home that seemed now to belong
to Peggy, too. So when they and their suit-cases
were at last regretfully taken to the train
by the entire family, the girls were dissolved in
a flood of tears as they settled themselves for
the journey, and the train had been under way
some two hours before they managed to say a
single word to each other.

.. File: 150.png

CHAPTER X—MISS ROBINSON CRUSOE
==============================

It was the snowiest part of the season that
Katherine and Peggy rode back into when they
returned from their Christmas vacation in the
Middle West.

The school grounds shone and blazed under a
triumphant sun, and out around them as far as
they could see was a great white world. One of
the most important gifts of the Foster family to
the two girls had been two pairs of snow-shoes:
not the poorly constructed, make-believe affairs
that are sometimes on sale in cities where there
is never enough snow to use them, but real Indian-made
shoes for which Mrs. Foster had sent
to Canada.

Naturally, they wanted more than anything
else to try them. So the first day that Mrs. Forest
gave them permission they went out on the
porch of the Andrews dormitory, comfortably
dressed in white sweaters and white tam-o’-shanters,
with moccasins on their feet and their beloved
snow-shoes ready to strap on in their
hands. After some grunting and much tugging
the shoes were adjusted, and then the two expected
to fairly sail over the white world, away,
away, like ice-boats, as fast as the wind. But,
oh, for the things that look so easy! There
was a good crust over the snow, but at the first
step—well, Katherine seemed to be trying to
walk on her head instead of her feet, that was
all. In trying to pick her up Peggy herself fell
headlong, and there they lay, ignominiously waving
their snow-shoes in the air, shrieking with
laughter and so limp from their merriment that
they could not get up again.

It was only after many attempts that they
stood erect once more, powdered over and caked
with snow where they had plunged through the
crust, and very red in the face and still shaking
with laughter.

“I put my toe down first,” gasped Katherine
between spasms, “just as I would if I was walking
ordinarily. I forgot that father said the
foot must come down flat. I’ve seen people snow-shoe,
but I never—t-tried it—oh, dear me, I’m
almost exhausted to start out with.”

Then once again, with the utmost gravity, the
two made the attempt, and Peggy almost at
once got the wonderful swinging motion of the
far northerners that makes snow-shoeing one of
the most delightful and exhilarating sports in
the world. To be warm in the midst of cold,
to glow from forehead to feet with life and heat
and happiness, all this glorious new experience
she was feeling for the first time. But Katherine
could not put her foot down correctly and failed
to get into the rhythm of the thing at all. And
as sure as they came to a hillock over she went
helplessly, and remained deep in the snow until
Peggy pulled her out, with scant sympathy, but
with much merry appreciation of her snow-powdered
face and its look of wondering appeal.

Nevertheless, in spite of difficulties and delays,
they had covered two meadows and a large
open field without more stress of adventure than
they found pleasant. All of a sudden Peggy
pointed ahead. There, gleaming on before them,
straight ahead and over the crest of a bit of
rising ground, were the glistening snow-shoe
marks of another explorer who had recently gone
that way before them. The sun shone into the
criss-cross pattern of the steps, which seemed to
the girls to be both invitation and challenge.

.. File: 154.png

   | “... All remind us
   | We can make our lives sublime,
   | And departing leave behind us,
   | Footprints in the snows of time.”

Katherine adapted the quotation, laughing. “If I could
leave behind me any such even tracks as that
it might be worth while going on, but when you
can’t get the swing of it, Peggy, you can’t keep
warm, and while I want to learn, sometime, I
think it wasn’t born in me as it was in you, and
it will need several practice attempts before I
can be in your class at all. So I’m going back—for
now—do you want to come, or are you
going on—?”

Peggy looked back toward the familiar roofs
of Andrews, and then she looked away out over
the barren fields in their whiteness, new and untouched
save for the gleaming snow-shoe tracks
that called and called to her to be as adventurous
as they.

“I guess I’ll go on,” she said, a hint of abandon
in her voice.

.. File: 155.png

“Well, good-by, hon,” said Katherine, meekly
taking her leave. “I will get about as much more
of this as I want going back, but I hope you have
a nice time—and—and end up at tea somewhere
just as we were going to.”

“Tea by myself would be horrid,” Peggy called
after her. “I won’t be long, but I just must have
some more, I love it so.”

Then she turned her face to the snow-shoe
tracks, and with a little gay song on her lips
took up their trail.

“I’m Robinson Crusoe,” she told herself blithely,
“and these tracks are the good man Friday’s.
And we are the only two people that there are
at all, and both of us have been finding it so lonely
by ourselves.”

Several of the Andrews girls had snow-shoes
and Peggy wondered which one the maker of
these tracks might be.

“I’ll try to walk right in her steps,” Peggy decided,
“and then I’ll get just the right method—but,
oh, my goodness, what a tall girl she must
be! These footprints are so far apart I can’t
possibly take such long steps. She must be a
wonderful snow-shoeist—maybe she won’t want
to walk with me even when I do catch up to her,
since she’s apparently so much more expert.”

With ludicrous attempts to fit her steps into
those of Friday, she pursued her way until at
last she had climbed the hill where the tracks
had at first been lost, and there they were continuing,
forever, it seemed.

Without hesitation Peggy followed. Lost to
all but the exhilaration of a brand new exercise,
and the stimulus of the cold wind that yet never
chilled her glowing face, she kept on until Andrews
was a thing of the past, and she could
not have found her way back except for the
tracks she was making now. And then all of a
sudden she noticed something was different. The
footprints no longer gleamed in her eyes, and the
beautiful dazzle of the snow was blotted out. In
an instant more a whirling mass of moist snow
flakes was falling about her, obscuring everything
but their own fantastic, falling selves.

“Well,” decided she promptly, “I guess I’ll be
getting back.”

But when she turned back the wind came rushing
in her face and took her breath and nearly
blew her down.

“Well,” she changed her mind. “I guess I
won’t. Friday, where are you—you must be
somewhere out in this sudden storm, too. And
if I could only find you I wouldn’t feel as lost
and shaky as I do now. Misery loves company—not
that I’m miserable—but something”—she
choked back a sob, “something seems to be
gloomy in my heart.”

Since she could not go back, and since the
thought of coming up with Friday was a very
comforting one, she plodded on, winking the
snow out of her eyes and shaking it off of her
cap and out of her hair.

She could scarcely see the tracks ahead of her
now, as the new snow was fast obliterating them,
and her own steps were made with increasing difficulty.
Anyone who has ever tried to snow-shoe
over soft, new-fallen snow knows the hardship
of Peggy’s predicament.

All at once she discovered that she could not
lift her left foot at all. Try as she would, it
would not rise and swing forward to its next
step.—Paralyzed! The horror of her situation,
there all alone in the cold and snow, out of sight
of everybody, slowly being paralyzed with no
one to know or care, filled her with momentary
hopelessness.

“Oh, Friday,” she thought, “I don’t see how
you could have snow-shoed so far ahead of me
as not to have been caught up with by now.
Dear, dear, if I could only find that girl, maybe
she would try to drag me to some farm house,
or something. If she’s one of the Andrews girls
she wouldn’t want me to freeze to death out here
all by myself. Maybe if I called very loud she’d
hear and come back—”

“Hello!” she shouted forth into the snow-filled
world. But there was no answer and the sound
of her own voice, so hollow and lonely, did anything
but cheer her up, so she did not try again.

With one last great effort of will she tried
to move the stubborn left foot. It was useless,—stuck
in the snow and helpless it remained.

“Oh,” she murmured, the tears beginning to
run down her cheeks to mingle with the wet
snow flakes melting there.

All of a sudden a dark form loomed up out
of the blinding snow immediately ahead. There
was the jar of a collision. Peggy clutched her
hands together, not knowing whether to be glad
or terrified.

And then she saw that the figure was that of
a very red-faced young man, who was also wearing
snow-shoes.

“Friday!” Peggy cried out, realizing in one
illuminating instant that this was the track-maker
she had been following as Crusoe.

“No, it’s Saturday,” replied the young man,
somewhat puzzled, “but I don’t see what that
has to do with it. I’m awfully afraid I hurt you,
bumping into you like that, but I never dreamed
there was anyone about in a storm like this.
Have you seen anything of a little dog? I lost
him a while back.”

“No,” shivered Peggy. “I’m afraid there isn’t
much use looking for him if he’s very little. Here
am I a perfectly strong girl and yet even I can’t
go any farther. I—can’t—go—another—step—”
Sobs fought with her words, and the
young good-looking face grew redder than ever.

“Tired?” he asked, “so tired that you can’t
walk? Well, then, I’m mighty glad I came.
Wait just a minute till I get a deep breath and
I’ll carry you. The extra weight will make us
sink in a lot in this soft snow, but if you don’t
mind the joggly walking I can easily manage—”

Peggy shook her head. “No, you’d better go
on by yourself,” she insisted. “I think a person
would be awfully hard to carry in snow-shoes,
they’d hang down and flop about so. And
I’m sorry about your poor little dog, but I think
it isn’t any use your waiting for him. You’d
much better save yourself,” she advised.

“Now,—come,” said the other.

“Listen, I’m paralyzed,” Peggy confessed.
“My left foot just won’t—won’t work, you know,
I can’t get it to snow-shoe another step. It just
stays still. It’s paralyzed—”

.. File: 162.png

What was that—could she believe her eyes?
The young man had glanced down sympathetically
enough toward the paralyzed foot but was
it any subject for such wild fits of mirth as he
immediately went into? Was it right that he
should laugh and laugh and point, speechless,
and then clap his hand over his mouth and go off
again?

“You are very cruel and perfectly horrid,”
cried Peggy sharply, “and I hate, I *hate* you!”

“O—oh, pardon me, little Hot-Temper, but
look back at your snow-shoe, *please*,” and the
laugh distorted his face once more.

Painfully and indignantly Peggy screwed her
cold face over her left shoulder and looked
down.

“Why—why,” she gasped all out of breath,
with astonishment, “how did it get there?”

For there, comfortably ensconced on the back
of her snow-shoe, waiting for a free ride, sat,
as perky as you please a plump puppy, his head
cocked interestedly on one side, and his wide
mouth open in an inquiring fashion as if he
would like to know what she was going to do
about it now that she had found him out.

“The—the—smart little thing!” Peggy
couldn’t help exclaiming. “There he was, being
a parasite, while I was supposed to do the walking.—Only
it’s a good joke on him, as I couldn’t.”

“As soon as the soft snow fell, I suppose the
little fellow sank in pretty deep every step,” the
young man grinned, stooping and sweeping the
quivering, frisking body into his arms. “And
the rascal was going to take it easy as soon as
he saw your snow-shoes coming along. Lucky
I missed him when I did,—and you’re not paralyzed
now, are you?”

“No,” laughed Peggy, “it seems I’m not. Oh,
wasn’t that funny? There I was dying all by
myself a minute ago of something that I didn’t
have at all.”

“I say, what we ought to do, though—there
is a tea house somewhere near here where we
can get something hot and then you’ll feel a lot
better and I don’t mind saying that I will too.
Come on, I know the way, and I’ll walk on the
windy side of you like this and—why, it’s going
fine, we’ll be there in no time.”

With courage and interest and even happiness
surging back into her heart now that this big
handsome boy was striding along by her side and
cheering her with laughing remarks that ignored
the wild storm about them, Peggy found snow-shoeing
exhilarating once more, and they made
good time, and were soon stamping in to the little
tea house.

In the neighborhood of Andrews were a number
of tea rooms and dainty restaurants, for it
was a rich school, and a good share of the girls’
pocket-money went for good things to eat. Peggy
was familiar with many of them, but she had
never happened to come here before. So she
knew that they must be a greater distance from
the school than she had supposed. Also, most
of the people seated around the adorable little
tables were boys instead of girls, and they all
looked up with interest at the entrance of the
snowy pair.

“Why, hello, Jim,” one of the boys called out
to Peggy’s companion. “Playing Santa Claus?”

Jim merely smiled and bowed, and guided
Peggy to a table by a roaring open fire. Then
he took her sweater and cap and flung them
across a chair to dry.

“Where do all these boys come from?” inquired
Peggy. “It looks like a perfect wilderness
around here.”

“We are near Anderwood, the boys’ prep
school,” explained her companion. “I used to go
there—just last year, in fact—and I was over
visiting some of my friends to-day. Most of
the fellows are having exams right now, you
know, and there were two hours this afternoon
when every fellow I knew was booked for something,
so I borrowed a pair of snow-shoes and
a dog and—took a stroll.”

“And you strolled right over to a girls’ school,”
laughed Peggy.

“As fast as I could go,” the young man answered
without embarrassment. “I’ll tell you
just what I was going to do, too. I don’t know
a soul at Andrews—or didn’t until I almost ran
over you in the storm. But I was just going
to look at a certain window. Now, I bet you’d
hate to tell me what you think of me.”

“A certain window,” mused Peggy. “Are you
a carpenter and did you want to see how it was
made?”

.. File: 167.png

Her mischievous taunt brought an explanation.

“I’m an Amherst man,” he began, and Peggy
leaned her elbows on the table, forgetful of the
steaming soup that had just been set before her.
“And I had finished my exams, so I took a vacation
to this part of the country, where I used
to go to school. The last time I was around
here I came up for the game, early in the fall.
And—well, you know how it is with glee club
fellows, they sing their heads off when their
team has won, and I guess we serenaded every
corner of the Andrews dorms until midnight.
Do you remember—did you happen to be awake
and hear us?”

“Oh, yes,” breathed Peggy ecstatically, and
then a furious flush went over her face. Was her
awful adventure of that evening to be recalled
now—would he guess that she—*she*, whom he
had saved from the storm was the very one who
had toppled the terrible rose-tree in its heavy
jardinière down onto his head as if she were
firing on him from a Zeppelin? So he was one of
the young men she had nearly killed! What a
mercy that he had not died, after all. With a
crushing wave of memory, the whole moonlit
scene flashed back to her, and once more the
ache of uncertainty and remorse were poignant
in her heart. She recalled Katherine’s joyous
shout that they were unharmed, and then—and
then her own rush back to the window and the
song they had sung just for her!

“You heard?” he was asking in pleasant interest.
“Which house are you in?”

“Oh,” cried Peggy in consternation. “The
other one.”

And then she realized by his puzzled expression
and his mouth twitching into a laugh that
her reply didn’t make sense. “I mean I didn’t
hear it,” she rushed headlong into the fib in her
distress. “I didn’t and my rose-tree is still all
safe in its jardinière in my room, and—and—anyway
you must realize that it was an accident!”
she finished desperately.

The boy’s hand went swiftly into an inner
pocket and drew out of a small envelope a tiny
withered rose bud, quite browned and crumply.
He held it silently over to her across the table,
his eyes shining with delight.

She looked at it with an attempt at impersonal
curiosity, and then the corners of her mouth
crinkled up, and that flickering dimple came into
play and she met his eyes with enjoyment as
keen as his own.

“And you all sang to me,” she reminded, “and
I never was so excited before.”

“Every one of us kept one of the flowers,” he
told her. “We didn’t know who dropped them
to us, we could only see just the fluff of your
light hair—but we carry them just for luck.
They are sort of insignia of adventure—”

“I was so afraid I’d killed you,” Peggy confessed,
“and I thought the only thing I could
do to atone would be to go and be a Red Cross
nurse, and help those that other people tried to
kill.”

The young man threw back his head and
laughed until the boys at the other tables looked
over and grinned in sympathy.

Peggy hastily turned her attention to her soup
and ate in silence.

When they had finished their hot chocolate,
too, she glanced out at the uninviting storm and
sighed.

“It must be miles back to Andrews,” she said.
“I suppose we’d better start. The storm makes
it awfully dark, doesn’t it?”

The lights had been turned on in the little tea
house and in contrast to their radiant cheer and
that of the dancing flames in the fireplace, the
outside world with its deep gray swirl of snow
flakes looked very black and chill.

“It’s not so much the storm—or not that only,—it
must be five o’clock, anyway, you know.”

Peggy jumped. “Oh, no, how *could* it be? We
won’t get home in time, then.”

“In time?”

“Yes, every girl has to be in her room at five-thirty
so as to have plenty of time to dress for
dinner at six. And the rule is partly to make
it certain that we’ll be in before it’s very dark,
too, I suppose.”

“Well, we’ll make a dive for it,” he said. He
drew out his watch, and then his face grew red
with that same brilliant over-color that it had
worn when she first saw him out there in the
whipping winds. This time it was not the wind
that had sent that flame over his forehead, chin
and cheeks,—it was shame that his sense of responsibility
should not have warned him of the
passing time.

“It’s—half-past five *now*,” he was obliged to
tell her.

Peggy looked into his poor, miserable face,
full of self-accusation, and with an effort of will
she drew her own lips into their best smile.

“Oh, well,” she said, “we’ve had a gorgeous
time, and a few short hours ago I didn’t expect
ever to see another half-past five in all this world.
I guess having one’s life saved will be sufficient
cause for delay to appease Mrs. Forest. I imagine
even *she* can get the importance of that.”

But in her heart she knew just about how
easy it was to explain things to Mrs. Forest—about
as easy as moving a mountain. Once the
principal decided in favor of punishment, not all
the king’s horses or all the king’s men could
change her mind. And, oddly enough, it was the
small faults that she scored most heavily. Peggy
sometimes felt that a girl might steal something
and yet not arouse Mrs. Forest’s wrath as thoroughly
as one who was late to dinner.

“You are to be trained in *manners* in my
school,” she often said, and it was true that with
her these seemed to come before everything else.
She was not so strict in regard to chaperonage
and all that as the New York finishing schools;
she had no need to be. The school was situated
in a small and desirable town, and among her
pupils were none of the vapid little Miss Foolishnesses
sometimes sent away to school because
their parents or guardians can’t manage them at
home. All her students were bright, eager, typical
American girls like Peggy and Katherine
and Florence, most of whom had a definite idea
and plan for their lives after graduation, the
majority trending collegeward. So, although
Peggy was the youngest girl who would receive
a diploma next June, it would not be on the score
of lack of chaperonage in going to tea with a
young Amherst friend that she would meet with
Mrs. Forest’s objection, but merely on the technical
ground of not returning at the exactly appointed
time.

Hastily he shook out her sweater and held it
for her, then flung into his own, and jammed
his cap on his head, and catching up the puppy
that all this while had been lying comfortably
before the fire he held the door open for her.
The storm blew in to meet them as they stood
there, and with a shiver of determination they
strapped on their snow-shoes and struck out.
“We’ll just go over to the next corner, where
we can get a street car—we’re only a little way
from Andrews by car line,” the boy told her.

They were fortunate enough to catch a car
at once, and all unconscious of the friendly
stares of the passengers they congratulated each
other on having left the tea room at exactly
the right moment.

The car stopped directly in front of the Andrews
gate. Their cheeks were aglow and their
minds full of the afternoon’s adventures rather
than with their consequences. On the wide porch
Peggy turned to her friend and said, “You must
go, now, and be introduced to Mrs. Forest at
some other time. They’re at dinner now, and
she’d kill me with her own hands if I call her
away. So I’ll let you go and just say, ‘Thank
you, and I’ve had a nice time’—”

She smiled up at him bravely, for presentiments
of her meeting with the Forest were already
beginning to creep into her heart.

“Good-by,” he said, and in a moment more
he was swinging down the walk and Peggy softly
opened the door and scurried upstairs to her
room. As always happens at a time like that, the
gay roar of voices in the dining-room died down
as she came in, and to everyone and certainly
to Mrs. Forest the slight sound of her moccasined
feet on the stairs was plainly audible.

When she came down a few minutes later,
glowing in a pink evening dress, Mrs. Forest’s
stare was like a cluster of icicles.

“No supper for Miss Parsons,” she sent word
by the maid, and after Peggy, mighty glad that
she had just had plenty of hot soup and chocolate,
had gone back to her room amid the sympathetic
glances of the dining-room full of girls,
the principal called that dread and clammily unpleasant
thing known to boarding schools as a
“house-meeting.”

She herself presided, and the meeting was
seldom called for any good, you may believe. Its
object was rather the punishment of someone
with all the sickening stages of a public investigation
into her conduct first. Mrs. Forest had
a way of making the girls cry in a homesick
fashion at these affairs and perhaps it is hardly
doing her an injustice to say that she enjoyed
it. At least the girls were all perfectly convinced
that it was her sport in life, and they
resented particularly that their idol, Peggy,
should be the subject of this one.

A deputation of girls went clattering up after
the victim and brought her down, showing no
further marks of perturbation than a tiny little
line of uncertainty in her forehead.

“Sit here, Miss Parsons,” commanded Mrs.
Forest as soon as all the girls had gathered.

Peggy sank gracefully into a chair and thrust
out her pink satin slippers daintily. Mrs. Forest
could not know how those tired little feet
ached inside those bright slippers.

“Young ladies, I have called this meeting in
order that I may have it understood that in my
school the rules are to be obeyed. Now I want
to ask each one of you what you think the rules
are for? Do you think they were made with
the idea of having them obeyed? Miss Thomas,
will you answer first?”

Florence felt like the most complete traitor
to Peggy that she should even be questioned on
such a subject when she knew the whole proceeding
was aimed at her friend.

“I—don’t—know—” she said miserably.

“Don’t know,” Mrs. Forest smiled disagreeably,
“I will ask Miss Parsons what she thinks.”

Peggy looked up from her contemplation of
the carpet and gave a little gasp.

“Oh, I’m not in a frame of mind to think
they’re very important one way or another,” she
replied, with an entirely maddening smile of deprecation.
Her dimple flashed in and out of her
cheek and she met Mrs. Forest’s gaze with an
unperturbed calm.

“Your penalty for feeling that way—and acting
as you feel is that you shall not be taken
to Annapolis in the spring when all the other
girls are going!” Mrs. Forest exclaimed with
heat. “Does that make a difference in your attitude?”

“No,” said Peggy, “for most of this afternoon
I never expected to go to Annapolis anyway—or
anywhere else in the world again.”

The girls caught the under note of earnestness
in her voice and leaned forward interestedly, excitement
beginning to shine in their questioning
eyes.

“I was paralyzed back there in the snow when
the storm came up,” she went on, a bit of the
weariness that was in every limb showing forth
in her voice, “I gave up expecting to come back.
And then a man saved me. Never mind about
Annapolis. I’m more than satisfied just as it is.”

“Were you in danger from the storm, Peggy?”
asked Katherine. “I was scared to pieces when
I saw it coming up, but I didn’t want to start a
search party—and someway I thought you
couldn’t really get lost—we know all the places
around here so well.”

“But I couldn’t see them,” said Peggy, “and
I got blown away every time I tried to turn in
a new direction. A man saved me and—got me
some hot chocolate, and—and I’ve been late to
dinner before and all this fuss wasn’t made over
it.”

“That’s just the point,” snapped Mrs. Forest,
“you have been treated with too great lenience.
If you had thought more of getting home on time
you wouldn’t have stopped for the hot chocolate.
At least that part wasn’t necessary.”

“Oh, but it rather was,” Peggy began, but
looking at Mrs. Forest she wondered how she
could be expected to understand. Could she ever
have been a girl on snow-shoes, and have known
the cold that gleamed in the frosty air and the
hunger that comes after great exertion? No,
what was the use of looking for understanding
there? Peggy lightly tapped the floor with her
foot.

“You may go,” Mrs. Forest graciously permitted
at this point, “I’m sorry, Miss Parsons,”
she so far unbent as to say at parting, “that you
thought you were lost and had a fright, but discipline
above all things—discipline, my dear.
Perhaps after this we shan’t have to combat your
continual tardiness.”

In their own room a while later Peggy threw
her arms around her room-mate’s neck and
danced her this way and that, in a manner quite
out of keeping with the tiredness that she felt.

“The greatest adventures, Katherinekins,”
she shouted. “Oh, listen, listen, I can hardly
wait to tell you.”

On releasing her friend, she proceeded to prepare
for bed, saying she was too exhausted to
sit up another minute. But she talked as she
slipped on her kimono and folded back the couch
cover from the cot bed on her side of the room.

“And, Katherine,” she came to the wonderful
part at last, “who do you suppose he was? One
of the people we tried to kill with our rose-tree—yes,
he had our rose—”

“Rose-tree?” cried Katherine, and then her
face, growing whiter and whiter in its excitement,
she clasped her hands together and
screamed out: “The fortune teller, the fortune
teller! She spoke of that—quick, Peggy, hurry,
what’s his name—is one of his initials H?
Peggy, don’t keep me in suspense a minute longer—what
is his name?”

Peggy was sitting up in bed with a queer expression
in her face. As Katherine finished she
looked across at her with a blank expression.

“Why, I don’t know his name!” she cried.

.. File: 183.png

CHAPTER XI—THE INITIAL H
========================

“Why, do you suppose I dreamed all night of
mandolins?” questioned Peggy, sitting up in bed
with a blanket hugged around her shoulders next
morning.

“Why, because,” said Katharine, “the clairvoyant
woman said that she saw a young man in
a college room playing a mandolin,—you remember?
And he answers all the rest of her requirements,
the walking in the cold, the meeting the
girl—you, and the rose-tree incident. Now, Peg,
did you think to ask him if he played the mandolin?”

“No,” said Peggy contritely, gingerly testing
the cold floor with her bare feet, “no,—and how
are we going to find out now?”

.. File: 184.png

“You’re a fine Sherlock,” cried Katherine,
“but, then, it’s always the Watsons of this world
that do the real work while the Sherlocks get
the credit.”

“I have just one clue,” sighed Peggy humbly.

“Well?”

“The boys at the tea house called him Jim.”

“*Jim!*” repeated Katherine in keen disappointment
and disgust. “Not an H in it!”

“No,” Peggy agreed, “and there are so many
Jims.”

“M.—Jim, Amherst—fine lot of information,”
murmured Katherine.

There really didn’t seem to be much that could
be done, so the girls went to recitations as on
other days. But they could not help the feeling
that they had really stumbled upon the very
person they had made it the business of their
year to find, and so their answers to the professors’
questions were often somewhat vague
and wandering, and once when the mathematics
teacher asked Peggy to draw a right angle triangle,
she said she hadn’t studied her mandolins
to-day, and sat blushing furiously throughout the
rest of the lesson.

It was late in the afternoon when one of the
maids called Peggy to the telephone. She ran
down the stairs with a wild and unaccountable
hope in her heart—if she should only have the
opportunity to find out everything so that
Katherine wouldn’t have so much cause to be
ashamed of her—if she could only ask him if he
*did* have a mandolin—

“Hello,” she was saying breathlessly into the
mouth-piece. “Hello—?”

“Miss Parsons—” a laughing voice came
over the wire and Peggy instantly framed her
lips to her question. It should not get away
from her this time—all this news that she must
have.

.. File: 186.png

“I called up Mrs. Forest and asked if the young
lady I rescued from the storm was all right after
her chill. I told her I was the one who had been
fortunate enough to be there, and she said, quite
politely, that Miss Parsons wasn’t hurt in the
least by the experience. That’s how I got your
name.”

But all this while Peggy was interpolating
wildly: “Do you play the mandolin? Do you play
the mandolin?”

And now that the voice was pausing for her
answer, her words came clear and distinct, “Do
you play the mandolin?”

“Do I *what*?” in astonishment.

“Do you play the mandolin?” monotonously.

“Why, why—how funny your first remarks
always are. Yesterday in the storm when I nearly
ran you down you cried out ‘Friday’—it didn’t
seem to have a bit of sense to it,—and now right
while I’m trying to tell you something you ask
me in a parlor conversational tone if I—if I——”

“Well, *do* you?” she insisted desperately.

“Yes, but—”

“Oh, goody, goody, then you’re the one!”
“What one?” mightily puzzled—and a trifle
impatient.

“I can’t tell you yet—I don’t even know your
name.”

“Why, of course, I want you to know my
name, that was partly why I called up,” in an injured
voice. “It’s Jim Smith.”

“Only that?” her disappointment was keen.

“James H. Smith, if you must have it all,”
somewhat surlily.

“O—oh,” there went singing across the wires
the breath of Peggy’s rapture. “Isn’t that
lovely.”

“No one ever thought it was particularly so
before,” the young man answered. “I’m glad
you like it. Now, what is all of your name?”

.. File: 188.png

“Peggy is the part you don’t already know,”
she confessed, “and I like it better than the last
part.”

“I do, too,” he chimed in heartily, “I won’t
need to say the last part at all any more, will I?”

“N-no,” Peggy laughed. “Considering who
you are. Only of course you don’t know yet,
do you?”

“Don’t know who I am? Well, now, I always
had a faint suspicion every time I looked in the
glass that I was myself.”

“I’ve said everything wrong,” apologized
Peggy sadly. “But you’ll understand after I’ve
seen you sometime again and told you about
everything.”

“Anything you say is all right with me, anyway,”
the voice answered quickly. “I wouldn’t
have you think for a minute that it wasn’t. After
the game way you almost went through death by
paralysis—”

.. File: 189.png

Here they both laughed, until the wires sang
again and again.

“May I come over to-morrow afternoon and—meet
the ogre and get her approval of me, and
all that?” the man’s voice asked at length.

“Yes, and you can meet somebody nicer than
the ogre, too,” generously promised Peggy, “my
dearest-in-the-world room-mate, Katherine Foster.
Oh, she is the splendidest girl! And the
prettiest! And the smartest, too.”

“To-morrow afternoon, then? Awfully glad
that you’re all recovered from yesterday—good-by.”

Peggy murmured her good-by and flew back
upstairs to tell the wonderful news to Katherine—that
he was, that he *was*, that he WAS!

“I can hardly wait to tell Mr. Huntington,”
cried Katherine, “can you?”

“Oh,” said Peggy doubtfully, “I don’t think
we have quite enough to go on yet to tell him
about it, do you? *We* think it is true but, after
all, we have only the word of that crazy black
velvet fortune teller. His middle name begins
with H, but that doesn’t tell us what it is, it might
not be—be—*that*, you know, after all.”

“Huntington,” smiled Katherine. “You are
afraid to say Huntington.”

“I’m not. Huntington, Huntington, Huntington!”

And then as if it had been the magic signal
for calling up the real Mr. Huntington on the
spot, one of the maids brought up his card at
the moment and said that he was awaiting the
young ladies in the drawing-room.

“It will be hard not to tell him,” sighed Peggy
longingly. “I’d like to have him know that there
was just a gleam of hope, anyway, you know, of
finding—”

“Let’s be careful, because there’d just be somebody
else disappointed besides us if it didn’t come
out right. Peggy, sure as I am that we’re on
the right—what do you call it—scent—nevertheless,
we must remember that almost every
man in college plays a mandolin—at least half
do,—and H. stands for so many names: Hill,
and Hough, and Hail, and, oh, dozens and hundreds
and for all I know thousands. No, it isn’t
a clear case yet, so don’t raise that poor old man’s
hopes.”

Down the stairs they went sedately, arm in
arm. Mr. Huntington had visited them at the
school several times since their return from
Katherine’s home. Sometimes he called upon as
many of the entire sixty girls as were about, but
more often he asked simply for Peggy and Katherine.

“I’m awfully glad to see you, Mr. Huntington,”
Peggy cried, running impulsively forward,
“especially to-day.”

“Peggy,” warned Katherine.

.. File: 192.png

“I mean after yesterday, you goosey,” she
frowned at her room-mate, and then in a very
audible aside, “did you think I would give it
all away like that?” She turned to their guest.
“You see I was nearly lost in the snow yesterday,
and from thinking I’d never see any of my
friends again to—to seeing them, you know, is
a very pleasant jump.”

“Well, I heard about it from one of the girls
who was passing my house and stopped in to tell
me about your adventure and I hurried over to
see if you’re surely feeling all right and how
you’d like a little dinner party at the Holland
Hotel in celebration of your escape?—you and
seven or eight classmates?”

“Oh, wouldn’t we?” cried Peggy. “I was wondering
how I was going to stand dinner in this
place to-night. You know they wouldn’t let me
have any last night and if your gr—I mean
if the young man that rescued me hadn’t given
me some soup before that I’d have starved.”

Katherine’s foot reached for Peggy’s to administer
rebuke for what she had so nearly said.
“It will be lovely for us to have the dinner party,
Mr. Huntington,” she put in hastily to cover the
mistake her room-mate had made. “Sometimes,
just eating here, we do get awfully hungry.”

“I never saw you girls when you *weren’t* hungry,”
laughed their friend. “It was your continually
thinking about something to eat that
first led to our acquaintance, wasn’t it?”

The dinner party that evening was a great success.
The girls loved nothing better than to
dress up in state and go in a crowd to the hotel
for dinner, but it was an event that came seldom
in their lives. They talked so much about
the wonderful lobster and the crisp French fried
potatoes and all the bewildering array of little
extras that the great subject in the minds of
the two principal guests was forgotten for the
time, and whether H. stood for Holt or Hamilton
became a matter of no great moment.

When, however, the card of Mr. James H.
Smith was brought to the girls the following
afternoon interest quickly revived and they went
downstairs with their best detective manners.

“This is the man whose dog I saved in the
storm and who, to show his appreciation, saved
me,” laughed Peggy by way of introduction.
“And this,”—presenting her room-mate, “is the
nicest girl in the world—whom I chance to room
with.”

“My only claim to distinction is rooming with
Peggy,” smiled Katherine, offering her hand.
“We’re glad to see you over here, Mr. Smith—and
are you going to show me the withered rose,
too? Because the rose-tree was mine as much
as Peggy’s—”

Peggy left Katherine laughing over the brown
petals with Jim, while she went to ask Mrs. Forest
to come in and meet their friend. “I think
he’s a relative of Mr. Huntington’s,” Peggy
whispered just as Mrs. Forest rose to accompany
her, in order to assure her friend of a hearty
welcome, “but I’m not sure.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Forest. “I shall be very glad
indeed to make the acquaintance of any relative
of Mr. Huntington’s—and you didn’t tell
me that before, Peggy—”

“I didn’t think of it before,” admitted truthful
Peggy.

Mrs. Forest sailed into the room, very impressive
and rustling in her afternoon silks, and
greeted the young student with unusual cordiality.

“I don’t see anything so clammy about her,”
he thought to himself; she almost seemed to retain
his hand in extra friendliness, as if he were
some favorite nephew.

.. File: 196.png

“Well, well,” she was saying, “there is a resemblance,
too, now I look at you. Yes, I think
I should have known you anywhere. You have
a relative to be proud of in Mr. Huntington,”
she continued, “you are a relative of his, I believe?”

Peggy clapped her hand over her mouth to
choke back the exclamation of dismay that rose
from her heart, and two slow tears of mortification
gathered in Katherine’s gentle eyes and
rolled brightly down her cheeks at the awful precipitation
of events Mrs. Forest had caused.

But the boy was answering and the girls could
hardly believe their ears as they heard him say
“Huntington? Why, no, I am afraid you have
confused me with someone else. I am not sure
that I have ever heard the name. I am not related
to any one owning it, in any case.”

Oh, tumbling air castles! oh, crashing dreams
of happy endings! oh, sick and weak and trembling disappointment,
and blank, meaningless future!

Peggy clasped her hands in her lap and leaned
forward and stared at the boy with saddest reproach.
He had certainly led them to believe he
was the missing Huntington heir; he had been
on their campus when the rose-tree fell, he had
admitted playing the mandolin, he had an initial
H., all just as the fortune teller had said, and
yet he was no more Mr. Huntington’s grandson
than she was!

The tears were falling so rapidly now on Katharine’s
cheeks that she could no longer keep from
being generally observed. She sprang up, and
with her handkerchief to her eyes groped her
way from the room, and they heard her a moment
later stumbling up the stairs.

Jim looked in bewilderment to the door
through which she had gone and then back to the
stricken Peggy with an expression of “What
have I done?” for he thought surely the girls
must have given some impression of him to their
principal for a reason of their own and now he
had ruthlessly destroyed the fabric of their tale.

Mrs. Forest herself looked vague and uncomfortable,
and after a few banal remarks, excused
herself on the ground that some of the teachers
were expected for tea and she must be in her
room to receive them. After she had swished
out Peggy drew a long breath.

“Then you aren’t—?” she questioned heartbrokenly,
“then you aren’t, at all?”

“Let me into the secret,” pleaded the miserable
boy. “I always knew girls were mysterious
persons, and that they lived in all sorts of
unreal adventures. Am I scheduled to pass for
an incognito villain of some sort—or—or prince—or
anything? Because I tell you frankly, I
ought to have been coached for my part beforehand
if that’s the case. I can’t be expected to
know all these things by intuition. Now I’ve
made that pretty Katherine cry, and I angered
you, and disgusted Mrs. Forest and yet, cross
my heart, and as I live, I’ve been behaving just
as nicely as I know how. Please, Peggy, clear
up the mystery. I’ve been working so hard at
trig just before exams that I’m in no state to
go on solving problems.”

“You see,” said Peggy, her mouth going into
a smile, and the absurdity of it all beginning to
send a sparkle of fun to her eyes, “it isn’t your
fault. We thought you were the missing grandson
of our friend Mr. Huntington, and we’ve
been Sherlocking since last Thanksgiving day
to find him. So when you tallied up with what
the fortune teller told us—”

“Fortune teller—Oh, I see!” laughed the
young man.

“And then, when your middle initial proved
to be H.—why, of *course*, we thought that stood
for Huntington, and I’m disappointed to death
that it doesn’t. By the way, what *does* it stand
for?” she asked curiously, pausing abruptly in
her explanation.

She could not have been prepared for the curious
expression that came into Jim’s face at this
point. His head drooped and three distinct series
of flushes and palings swept his good-looking
countenance.

“I don’t—know,” he said after a time, in a
low voice.

“Don’t—know?” screamed Peggy with a rising
inflection and returning hope. “Why don’t
you know? Please forgive my awful rudeness,
but if you only should prove to be the right one,
after all, you know, think what it would mean to
Mr. Huntington.”

“My mother died a long time ago,” the young
man said. “I was just a small boy. I was to
be brought up and educated for one purpose—that
of making a great deal of money to—to—well,
I might as well tell you, Peggy, I can trust
your understanding,—to pay back a debt to my
mother’s father—”

He noticed that Peggy’s look of reproach and
pain and anxiety had all faded away and in its
place was beaming unmitigated delight. It was
an expression which seemed to him strangely
out of accord with the story he was telling, but,
nevertheless, if he could give pleasure to this odd
little flyaway creature by the recital of his life’s
tragedies, he was willing to do so.

“When I should have amassed a great fortune
I was to be told to whom to take it, but until
an amount she specified had been gotten together
in toto, I wasn’t to know my grandfather’s address
for fear I’d want to send him the money
we owed bit by bit. And, indeed, I should have
wanted that, but for some reason she was unwilling
to have anything but the entire huge sum
of the debt turned over to him. No part payments
in her plan. My father had borrowed the
money for some oil ventures out west, and after
a good many years those lands have turned out
as good as father’s wildest dreams, and I have
the money to return to my grandfather—every
cent of it—but, listen, Peggy, even you sitting
there laughing, with your eyes shining, can understand
the tragedy and irony of this—my
mother died without ever telling me my grandfather’s
name!”

“O—oh,” said Peggy, the smile leaving her
face as if it had been suddenly washed away.
“That must have bothered you many times.”

Then she looked straight ahead of her thoughtfully
for a minute. “It’s strange that the oil
wells turned out all right, after all,” she murmured
absently. “I’m sure Mr. Huntington
never dreamed they would.”

But the boy, swept back into the past by his
own story, was raptly gazing into the fireplace
and paid no attention to her remark whatever.

“I don’t think it as romantic, your turning
out to be rich,” Peggy continued, “as if you had
turned out to be poor, the way I thought you
would, and then Mr. Huntington would have
taken you right in and said the debt was nothing,
and he would see that you had everything
you wanted. Yes, that would have been the ideal
way.”

The boy glanced up at her and smiled whimsically.

“Always that Mr. Huntington,” he said, “who
is he?”

“Why, your gr—I mean a friend of mine
and Katherine’s,” finished she lamely.

“And some oil wells figured in his history,
too?” the boy wanted to know. “You seem to
be in everybody’s confidence, Peggy, though I
must say I don’t myself see what there is about
you to make people suppose you’d sympathize
with them—when you sit there and beam as happily
through their tragedies as if they were telling
you about a picnic.”

“I’m sorry—” breathed Peggy, and a real
hurt crept into her voice.

Just at this minute Katherine came into the
room again, her tears dried and the lines of unhappiness
smoothed out of her forehead. She
sat down gracefully and tried to appear at ease,
as if nothing had happened. Both Peggy and
Jim wondered at the self-control she displayed
in making a reappearance after her grief-stricken
exit, but they could not know that Mrs. Forest
had tiptoed up to her room and compelled the
poor child to come down again, saying that it
was a terrible and foolish breach of manners for
her to have left in any such silly way, and that
the only way she could atone for it was to go
down and think how much better it would have
been if she had behaved sensibly in the first place.

So Katherine made a few polite remarks, all
the time wondering what Peggy’s happy air
meant, and thinking her very shallow indeed to
be able to recover so quickly from so bitter a
disappointment as they had just been through.

“I wonder?” she heard Peggy say, to her increasing
astonishment, “would you think it very
queer if I asked you to come right over to Mr.
Huntington’s with us for a few minutes? Your
story and his are certainly an awfully unusual
coincidence, if they aren’t something more. By
that I mean, if they aren’t one and the same
story. And since you said your middle initial
didn’t stand for anything that you were aware
of, mightn’t it stand for Huntington?”

“My mother gave my name in at school as
James H. Smith, that’s all I know about that
part. I usually sign it Holliday, because I like
that name. It might be Huntington. Of course
I’ll go and see this old man with you, if that’s
the way you’d rather spend the afternoon.”

.. File: 207.png

CHAPTER XII—THE MEETING
=======================

They could see Mr. Huntington sitting in the
library, reading, as they came up the snowy
walk. The room looked warm and peaceful and
there was a contented expression on his face as
his white head bowed over the book.

The wind was howling around them and it
slapped the tattered remnants of vines against
the porch as it had done on that first day Peggy
worked her daring heart into a state courageous
enough to carry her to the very door of Gloomy
House. Inside, in contrast to the bluster without,
the library looked as cozy and homelike as
a room could well be when only one person lives
in it.

.. File: 208.png

“Peggy,” said Katherine, “we may be going
to disturb his peace for nothing.”

“Pshaw,” said Peggy, the light of high adventure
shining in her eyes, “I’d rather have all
sorts of surprises and disappointments and hurts
and aches and shocks in my life than just have
it all a kind of dull monotony, and I always give
other people credit for feeling the same way. I
guess Mr. Huntington would rather have a
*chance* of everything’s coming out right than
never know about it at all.”

“I agree with Peggy, whatever her wise little
meaning is,” laughed Jim. “I think he would,
too.”

They were on the porch by this time, and
Peggy saw Mr. Huntington’s head lifted inquiringly
as the sound of their footsteps reached his
ears. Then as the old bell jangled through the
house he rose hastily and laying his book face
downward on the table came slowly to the door.

.. File: 209.png

For some seconds he fumbled with the lock
and then threw back the door, while a sudden
look of glad surprise went across his face at
the sight of Peggy and Katherine. At first he
did not notice their companion. The three entered
the hall and then Peggy said, “Mr. Huntington,
this is Mr. Smith, and I wanted you to
meet him for a very special reason.”

“Yes?” the old man said, shaking the other’s
hand, “I’m very glad, I’m sure. Come into the
library, all of you, and tell me all about it. Now,
what can I do for the young man?”

For Mr. Huntington had no thought in his
head but that here was some young football
player who needed funds, or the representative
of some charitable organization that wanted a
contribution. And, since Peggy brought him, he
should have it.

“Oh,” said Peggy, with a little pout. “You’re
always thinking that. And I don’t blame you,
for I suppose lots of people do want things and
come and ask you for them. But Jim is awfully
rich, and—and—” she broke off helplessly and
glanced beseechingly at Katherine for help as to
how to go on.

For the last few minutes Mr. Huntington had
been studying Jim with a curious intentness, and
a startled expression had even begun to creep
into his face. With a vague gesture, as of one
who is trying to recall some long gone memory,
he drew his hand back and forth across his forehead.
There had been ghosts of a kind in Huntington
House right up to the time when Peggy
and her fifty-nine little friends had driven them
out forever. But there had never been a visible
one before, never more than a haunting and accusing
thought, not a red-cheeked, fresh-faced
young man that somehow did not make Mr.
Huntington think of a young man at all, as he
sat watching him, but rather made him recall a
woman, who had defied him in a moment of pride
and gone away from him and out of his life,
leaving no trace.

There was something about the finely drawn
young mouth. Something about the blueness of
the eyes—Mr. Huntington started and addressed
the boy in a sharp voice.

“You remind me very much of—of a relative
of mine,” he said abruptly, “you said your name
was Smith?—or Peggy said so—Of course, there
are a thousand Smiths about here, but Peggy
said she had brought you here for a very special
reason. I must beg you to tell me what it is at
once. This relative of mine married a man
named Smith. I don’t think I mentioned his
name to you, Peggy?”

“No,” said Peggy, shaking her golden head.
“If you had I’d have found him lots sooner!”

The old man looked quickly from one to another
of the little group, and in a breathless rush
of words Peggy told him all the similarities between
his history and that of the young man.

“And if it doesn’t all *match*,” she cried, “then
I’ll eat my Greek books!”

Mr. Huntington walked over to his desk,—a
big, ancient affair with a dozen little curious
drawers that pulled out by means of bright glass
knobs. From the smallest of these he drew forth
tremblingly all that it contained, a single photograph,
and approaching the boy, held it out to
him.

“Have you ever seen that face?” he asked
tensely.

With a troubled air the young man took it and
gazed straight into its pictured eyes, his face
tightening as he did so.

“It’s—my mother,” he said simply, after a
pause. “And I have a picture just like this one.
Is it true, then, sir, all this romance these girls
have given me a part in—and are you indeed my
grandfather?”

There was a note of awe in his voice as he rose
before the old man, holding out his hand.

The realization that a life-old dream, long
since given up and buried in his mind with the
things that were not to be, was actually coming
true, that the very picture the library fire had
conjured up for him evening after evening as
he sat alone and lonely, gazing into its depths,—this,
with its sudden rush of emotion, brought a
kind of illumination to the figure of the old man
as he stood there, and seemed to shed for a moment
the passing glory of youth once more over
his face.

Swiftly and silently Peggy went to Katherine
and took her hand and, with their fingers on their
lips, the two stole to the library door and thence,
unnoticed, from the room. A few minutes later
they were running down the frosty walk, their
eyes happy and their cheeks aglow, and their
hearts kept time to their running feet.

“If our mathematics only solved as nicely as
that,” Peggy murmured longingly. And Katherine
pressed her hand, and they danced along
on the sidewalk until the people passing turned
wistfully to gaze after them, wondering how it
would seem to have such an overflow of spirits
that one must run and skip and laugh out loud to
express them.

“Let’s have all the girls we can pack into the
room in for a midnight celebration,” suggested
Katherine as soon as they had flung off their
coats in their own room.

“Good girl,” chirruped Peggy. “About ten
people—our most special own crowd. Hurry up
and be ready for dinner—and is there any butter
out on the window ledge?”

Katherine craned her eager head out of the
window into the cold. “Not a bit,” she said.
“We have a can of condensed milk left, though.”

“Fine,” cried Peggy, counting off on her fingers
the butter, the sugar, and the alcohol, the
butter, the sugar, and the alcohol—“for I don’t
suppose there is any alcohol, is there, friend infant?”

“’Fraid not,” sighed Katherine.

From this an outsider might suppose that the
girls were planning to concoct some sort of intoxicating
beverage for their innocent little midnight
party. But it was only the preliminary
preparation for the inevitable fudge. And the
alcohol was to *run* the chafing-dish, and not to
go *into* it.

Just before dinner, Peggy, asparkle in her
golden satin, so nearly the color of her lovely
hair, went shouting through the corridor, “Alcohol!
Al—co—hol!”

And behind the closed doors every girl knew
that somewhere there was to be a party and,
recognizing the voice, ten of them guessed that
they would be invited. It was not until her second
trip, however, that her call brought results
in the form of an opening door and a nice, full
bottle of denatured alcohol generously thrust into
her hand by one of the hopeful ten.

“You know me, Peggy,” hinted the owner of
the contribution. “I’m fudge hungry, too. What
time is the happiness?”

“When you’re invited you’ll find out,” retorted
Peggy, hurrying off with the alcohol and humming
a little tune.

When the girls went in to dinner a mysterious
whisper went round. It was “Save your butter,
and ask for two helps.”

The butter balls remained untouched on each
of ten plates as a result, and were finally gathered
together very surreptitiously onto one plate just
before the dishes were cleared for dessert. Under
the auspices of Peggy this one dish was covered with
a saucer and sneaked down into the
folds of her napkin.

When the sauce that they invariably had for
dinner on this night of the week was set before
them with a general dish of granulated sugar to
make it sweet enough, she pointed toward the
sugar bowl and several of the girls looked miserable,
because sugar is an awfully hard thing to
take away unobserved.

But tea was served, and three of the girls
asked for just cups and saucers because they liked
to fix theirs up themselves, they would put in the
sugar and cream and would then pass them for
the tea to be poured in. But the empty cups
safe in their possession, they each asked earnestly
for the sugar, and slowly and painstakingly, talking
all the time so as to divert attention, they
shoveled in spoonful after spoonful until the
cup was full. Then with a sigh of relief at a
difficult duty well done, they sank limply back
in their chairs, only being sure to remember to
be passing something when any of the waitresses
approached, so that their hands would cover the
too-sweet tea-cups with nothing in but sugar.

“Won’t you have some wafers?” Florence
Thomas would ask Helen Remington in a worried
voice every now and then, lifting the plate
and offering it to her solicitously. Of course, the
girls weren’t sitting at Mrs. Forest’s table this
week, or it never could have been managed and
they would not have thought of trying. But
just by themselves it wasn’t impossible. When
dinner was over and their principal and the teachers
had moved toward the drawing room, they,
with wild sidelong looks and terrified glances this
way and that, sniggering conversation that didn’t
mean anything, gathered up their trophies, hugging
them as close as might be, and covering
them with folds of satin gown and little nervous
hands. Then, following, wherever possible, some
girl who was going uprightly forth with nothing
that she shouldn’t have, the little guilty procession
filed out and rushed for the stairs, stumbling
and laughing in their haste and leaving, all unnoticed
by them, a tiny tell-tale trail of sugar
up the broad varnished stairs.

All these savings were taken to the room where
Peggy and Katherine lived, and then the girls
went their separate ways serenely, some to study
and some to bed, each knowing that she would
be summoned at the proper time to partake of the
fruit of her spoils.

“What shall we do, are we sleepy or do we
want to sit up a while and talk?” Peggy and
Katherine, the hostesses-to-be, consulted each
other. It was characteristic that they used the
plural, for it always happened that they were
either both sleepy or both wide awake.

“Well,” Katherine suggested, after a few moments
of deliberation, “I say that we tuck all up
with nice soft quilts and talk. We can talk about
the Huntingtons and how mean Mrs. Forest is
sometimes, and—and everything, until it’s time
to start the chafing-dish and call the girls.”
“Midnight” didn’t mean the stroke of twelve to
them at all. It was any time in the late, late
hours, along about half-past ten or eleven, say.

In their pink and blue quilts they talked and
talked in the darkness, for, of course, Mrs. Forest
and the teachers mustn’t see any light gleaming
under their doors after ten o’clock. Soon
their eyes grew heavy and the thoughts of fudge
began to mix themselves up curiously with
dreams.

They were two little tumbled over figures, fast
asleep, Peggy on her couch and Katherine on
hers, when the indignant guests, wondering why
they had not been summoned to the party and
deciding to come without waiting for the formal
bidding, strode in upon them, with much flutter
of silk and crepe kimono, and patter, patter of
slippered feet.

“Well, did you ever!” cried Florence Thomas.
“Light the candles somebody; Doris start the
chafing-dish, and Helen measure out that butter,—”

“Is—it—time—to—get—up?” came in muffled
accents from Katherine’s couch, and a moment
later a candle gleam flickered into her
drowsy eyes. “Oh, my stars, girls!” she cried,
sitting up at once and staring around wildly, “do
you think this is a nice way to come to a party?”

Peggy was breathing evenly, and she turned
fretfully to the wall when Florence shook her.
“Oh, very well, Miss Fudge Party,” Florence
murmured, “we’ll see if you won’t wake up,—”
and she went over to the wash pitcher behind the
screen and dipped a wash-cloth in its cold contents.

“Ha ha,” she laughed, in imitation of a stage
villain. Wringing out her weapon she approached
the couch of the unconscious sleeper,
full of delighted anticipation.

Just as the terrible and efficient awakener was
about to slap down on its victim’s placid face the
victim opened her eyes and looked up at the plotter
reproachfully.

“Oh, I heard your fiendish plot—I heard the
water sousing around,” she said, “but I thought
there was no use waking up till the last minute,—I
was in the middle of such a delicious dream.”

“Well,” sighed Florence, much wounded, because,
of course, you can’t put a wet wash-cloth
on a waking person’s face. “All that energy
wasted. Girls, do hurry up the fudge, so that I
can comfort myself for having been ‘foiled
again.’”

The room, with the little whispering group of
girls in it, some on the couches and some on the
floor, garbed in all the delicate shades of boudoir
attire, pale blue, pink, and rose, saffron yellow,
lavender and dainty green; with the tiny spurts
of golden candle flame dotted here and there on
table and mantlepiece; with the hot, chocolate-smelling
fudge bubbling away in the chafing-dish,
looked like some fairy meeting place, with all the
adorable fairies assembled.

When the fudge was done they put the pan
out of the window and hoped that it wouldn’t
fall down and all be lost. It didn’t, and, before
it had fairly cooled, they cut it and lifted the
squares in their eager fingers,—great, rich, soft,
wonderful squares of delight,—and ate them with
greedy pleasure, down to the last, last crumb.

.. File: 224.png

CHAPTER XIII—SPRING AND ANNAPOLIS
=================================

In the days that followed after the winter
snow’s melting it seemed to Peggy that she was
seeing the world by sunlight for the first time.
The wonderful new lights that fell on everything,
making even a roof or a clay bank a beautiful
thing to behold, the subtle perfume that came
drifting out on the breeze over orchard and woodland,
the pink blossoms on the apple trees, all
these things sent her about with her head in
the clouds and a happiness at her heart that was
just the joy of living.

The girls sauntered now on their way to
classes, instead of hurrying and scurrying to escape
the cold. They sang on their way to chapel,
they lingered on the porch steps after luncheon,
every Saturday they planned some kind of tramp
or picnic that was different, very, from the gay,
romping affairs of the fall. These parties, or
“bats,” as they always called them, not knowing
at all that that word was considered of rather
vulgar significance out in the world, were long,
lazy, enjoyable affairs, where groups went together
with arms twined about each other’s shoulders,
always singing, singing. They sang Yale
songs and Harvard songs and Princeton songs,
then each group of girls sang the songs of the
college they themselves hoped to attend, and
wound up with the Andrews favorites.

“People along here would think us German
soldiers, the way we sing as we go,” said Peggy.
“Oh, isn’t it all heavenly, heavenly. Music with
us that we make ourselves, and apple blossom
petals as sweet as roses dropping down on us
from the trees wherever we go, and all the world—ours—”

.. File: 226.png

To her own surprise a sob choked her, and the
other girls did not laugh, but looked away with
the tolerant dreaminess the spring had given
them.

The great topic of every spring at Andrews
was Annapolis, and, as soon as they had thoroughly
exhausted the subject, Annapolis all over
again. Which girls were to go and which must
stay at home?

“Oh, girls, the marine band!” one group would
remind another as they met going to and from
classes.

“And, oh, that gymnasium floor—” the other
group would sing out.

Peggy dreamed of nothing but picturesque
white buildings and uniformed young middies
drilling, and wonderful girls in wonderful gowns
dancing, dancing with wonderful representatives
of the navy.

Not for her—oh, not for her, this one desirable
thing of all the world that the others were to
have! Of course, she had wickedly been saved
from a storm—but it seemed to her now very unjust
that this should stand in her way, now especially
when the snow was all gone and there
was nothing left to remind her of how grateful
she ought to be for that past favor of fortune.
Was getting saved and being served to hot chocolate
such a crime, then? Hadn’t any other girl
ever had the same experience? Well, if she
hadn’t, Peggy pitied her rather than envied her,
she knew that. Oh, Mrs. Forest, what a narrow-minded
woman she was. Just as if she had been
born a hundred years old as she was now and
had never known any girlhood, Peggy mused.
Oh, Annapolis, Annapolis! Oh, dear, oh, dear,
oh, dear!

Nothing would ever make up—nothing ever
or *ever*! If she could only go and look on, even,
she would be satisfied. Must she see the others
fluffing up their ruffles and pinning on their
sashes and starting off with bobbing rose-buds at
their waists while she remained behind, her nose
pressed flat to the window, to see them off and
the tears coursing sadly down her face? It was
a heartbreaking picture and Peggy threw herself
on the bed and cried over it until the thought
came to her that if she kept this up she would go
through the grief of it all many times before it
actually came to her to bear it, and perhaps for
the occasion itself there would be no tears left.

She wiped her eyes and saw that they were not,
after all, so very red, and no permanent wrinkles
had been made in her face from screwing it up
so hard. She decided that she’d just pretend
she was going instead of continually dwelling
on the fact that she wasn’t. She got out her
lovely little frock her aunt had recently sent her
to be her best through the spring term. It was
a deep, sweet pink—Peggy called it her candy
dress—and tenderly she smoothed the dainty chiffon
tunic over the crisp taffeta slip. There is a
balm just in the touch of pretty clothes to dry the
tears of any girl or woman unless her grief is
very deep. Peggy felt the color stealing back
into her cheeks, and her eyes were a-shine with
admiration. The very way the dress fell, all
fairy-like and light, from her fingers when she
lifted away her hand, the glow that the silk gave
back, the cool feeling of the silver bead fringe
that went around the sleeves,—Peggy would
have had to be far less susceptible to the lure of
feminine finery than she was if she had not
caught her breath with pure joy in the possession
of such a gown.

There are pinks and pinks, some beautiful
shades and others not so lovely. But silk stockings
will often take the loveliest pink of all, and
Peggy’s were delicately tinted and gleamy and
did justice to the dress with which they were to
be worn. Her little slippers had high heels, and
how she reveled in them! After the flat heels
they were obliged to wear every day at Andrews
the dignified height and the curving grace of
these were a rest and a delight to the eye. They
were all of pink satin, just a shade deeper than
the stockings, and were decorated with tiny
handwrought gold buckles that glinted and
flashed in the light like a cluster of yellow diamonds.

“Oh, tra, la,” sang Peggy, handling them, “oh,
tra, la.”

And her pleasure in living rushed back full
force, for, after all, these things were hers and
even if there was to be no Annapolis, she would
have the satisfaction of knowing how she *might*
have looked if she could have gone.

That night, when the girls discussed every detail
of the trip, even to the train they were to
take and what they were to wear as traveling
suits, Peggy found that she was able to join in
without tears and without bitterness and help
them make their plans perfect. The girls were
overwhelmed by the generosity of her attitude,
and marveled at her cheerful spirit.

“There’s one thing, Peggy,” said Helen Remington
across the table, “if you were going there
wouldn’t be a chance for the rest of us. There’d
just be a general stampede in your direction and
*we’d* look on alone and unnoticed.”

The other girls nodded. Peggy thought of
the dear pink dress and those wondrous slippers,
and in the egotism of her youth she thought it
might be so, after all.

It was one day off, at last. Even Mrs. Forest
was practicing a peaches-and-cream, prunes-and-prisms,
butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth manner
for the occasion. She was very kind to all the
girls, and was careful not to hurt the feelings of
the few culprits who had to stay at home, by
references in their presence to the good times the
others expected.

“If I *were* going, I’d wear this brown taffeta
suit down there on the train,” mused Peggy, “and
these bronze shoes. My, I think it would be fine
going down there on the train—oh, dear, oh dear,
I’m afraid I’m going to cry again over it, and
it isn’t time yet. Time enough when I hear the
taxis whirring off with them inside. How can
Katherine be so happy in going when I have to
stay behind? I’d never go a step if she were in
my place. Never in the whole world! Oh,—de—ar!”

If Katherine had been taking pleasure in the
contemplation of a good time that did not include
Peggy it would have been very unlike her indeed.
But, while Peggy had been sentimentally weeping
before the pink gown in their room at Andrews,
she had been as busy as might be with plans to
make everything come out all right. And it was
perfectly true that if she had been unable to
bring about the desired result, she would not have
gone herself, but would have developed a headache
at the last minute that would have compelled
her to remain at home with her injured
room-mate.

Several times she had run in lonely haste up
the walk of Huntington House to hold conference
with the owner and his grandson. For, as
she put it, nobody could hope to do anything
with Forest unless they had a “pull,” and Mr.
Huntington was the only person she knew who
had one and might be expected to exercise it in
a case like this.

“Threaten her with the gymnasium,” begged
Katherine. “Tell her Peggy has changed her
mind about giving up the money for a gymnasium
for such a mean horrid school as she is
making of our dear old Andrews. Tell her that
you’ll write to the boys at Annapolis and tell
them that Forest keeps her prettiest girls at
home and thinks just the ordinary ones are good
enough for them. And then let her see how
quickly the yearly invitation to bring down some
of the girls will be renewed. Why, they’ll never
consent to hear Andrews mentioned in their presence
again.” She was becoming vindictive in the
extreme, and Mr. Huntington sat back and
laughed at her.

But, laughing or not, he promised to try his
hand at appeasing Mrs. Forest, and this was
just what Katherine had wanted, so she forgave
him his mirth at her expense.

Mr. Huntington was seen to come up on the
porch at Andrews a few hours later, and the
girls wondered how many of them he would
ask for. Imagine their surprise, therefore,
when he did not even send up word to Katherine
and Peggy, but remained in solitary consultation
with their principal, and finally walked off without
a backward and upward glance at the window
full of friendly figures waiting to wave at
him.

He left Mrs. Forest in a sad state of mind.
But there was only one way out of it—and that
was to trudge up the broad staircase and fill
Peggy’s heart with wild delight by the remission
of her sentence.

This she did with what grace she could muster,
and it must be admitted there was a guilty
feeling of not deserving it when Peggy, impelled
by the sudden rise in her emotional temperature,
flung herself upon her quondam enemy and
kissed her on the lips.

“There, there, child,” murmured the much-softened
principal. “I’m sure you’ll be a credit
to the school, and now I want you to forget
everything but the good time. What dress shall
you wear, dear? What, that? Oh, it is beautiful.
Your aunt is a very charming woman, my
dear, and possesses excellent taste. I hope it
will be very becoming to you.”

“Hope!” cried Peggy to Katherine as soon as
she had gone, “she hopes. Why, Katherine, any
living person with eyes in their head could see
that it *will* be!”

So it happened that when the rest of the girls
were packing their suit-cases with joyous exclamations
over everything they put in, Peggy,
too, was packing hers. And when the happy
party stepped into its several cabs, she was at,
last triumphantly wearing the very brown taffeta
that she thought ideal for the train, and her face
was as beaming as the spring morning. What
chattering went on inside those jolting cabs,
what hopes, what surmises, what anticipations
filled those youthful hearts!

When they stepped out at the station, a breathless
boy from the florist’s ran up to the group
panting out, “Miss Parsons, where is Miss Parsons,
please? I ran over to the school but I got
there just too late.”

And when Peggy, her face flushing with surprise
and pleasure, admitted that she was the
one sought, he eagerly handed her, not one box,
but two, and amid the excitement of the crowding
girls, Peggy unwrapped them then and there.
One was fragrant with the most generous bunch
of violets she had ever seen, tied with the daintiest
lavender ribbon and thrust through with a
violet pin so that she might transfer the glowing
beauty of them from the box and tissue wrappings
to her coat at once. The other box was
white with lilies of the valley, and Peggy buried
her bright face in their sweetness ecstatically.
Then she bethought her to look for cards.

“Because, of course, magical as it seems, getting
here like this just as I am about to start,
and not knowing a single person I’d dream would
send me any flowers, still, I suppose somebody
*did* like me enough to do it. So I’ll—just—see—”

Her inquiring fingers slid inside the envelope
that came with the lilies of the valley.

“Mr. Huntington,” she read. Then with increasing
excitement she opened the other little
envelope and her eyes danced as she read that
card.

“James Huntington Smith.”

“Oh, how lovely of them, how lovely,” she
cried. And then and there with hasty fingers,
she mingled the lilies of the valley in with the
violets, and gleefully pinned on the whole gorgeous
if somewhat too conspicuous bunch. In
stories, the girls who receive flowers divide them
up among their friends. But in life, how seldom,
how seldom! With a finer appreciation
of the intentions of those who sent them, they
are quite delightedly selfish with them, and almost
any real live girl would have combined two
bunches, if they were flowers that went well
together, as Peggy did, and would have worn
them that way, and been proud to do it, too.

There is something about the wearing of flowers
sent by a really interesting person that just
tips the whole day with a kind of satisfied glory.
Peggy’s manner instantly took on a lovely
graciousness and sweetness, for she was wearing
the evidence that two people liked her and wanted
her to have a good time, and it behooved her to
live up to the added beauty the flowers lent her.

It was a very long ride down to their destination,
and Peggy had time to conjure up in her
mind all the pictures she had ever seen of men
in the navy, and battleships, and cannons, and
such warlike objects. She thrilled to the thought
of such a life, with its roving over the whole
world after school was done, in those great gray
floating forts of cruisers with their long sinister
guns always ready for whatever might deserve
their cruel attention. Even when women vote,
she thought, there would be no such glory of
open sea for them. There would still be heights
on which men would dwell where women could
never expect to climb. Well, came the comforting
thought, but the women could go and dance
with these wonders that were afraid of nothing!
They could be waited on by them, too, and
served to ices! My, my! Well, it wasn’t so
bad after all. Peggy began to feel that everything
in the world was pretty well balanced after
all. And she was glad that she lived in so fine
a place, and that she was young and nice looking,
and that she had a pink dress in her suit-case.

When they came to Annapolis at last and the
party descended, all excitement, Peggy could
hardly wait to appear at the scene of the coming
festivities. But they were taken first to their
rooms at the inn and there they left their baggage
and powdered their noses, and fluffed their
hair and then sallied forth once more, this time
to go through the archway right into the Annapolis
grounds, with the white buildings just
as Peggy had dreamed, and the midshipmen
and girls strolling and laughing together along
the walks. They went to the reception room
while Mrs. Forest sent up their cards. It had
been arranged that certain of the young men
were to come down and take charge of the party
for the afternoon and evening. And while they
were waiting Peggy looked at the other occupants
of the reception room. Did the hearts
of any go bounding along as much as those of
the Andrews girls? Peggy, seeing no one but
several middle-aged women, thought it was not
likely. But perhaps she was wrong, for these
were mothers, and they had not seen their sons
since the beginning of the term. Would they
be changed? Would they be glad to see them
there for the games, and pilot them around as
loyally as if they had been slight, laughing,
dimpled young girls like that charming group
yonder? Perhaps there was even more excitement
in it for them than for the Andrews girls,
but Peggy couldn’t know.

When at last the group arrived who were to
pilot the girls about for the afternoon, Peggy
was conscious of being introduced to one pleasant-faced
young man after another, each in uniform,
and each with a certain indescribable quality
of self-possession and the ability to do just
the right thing that characterizes the boys who
are trained in our naval Academy. Would the
girls rather go out on the water and see the
boat races, or would they go over to the baseball
game? It was a sort of a three-ringed circus
day at the Academy.

Some girls wanted to go out in the launches,
others thought the glare of sun on the baseball
field would not burn their noses so badly. Peggy
just couldn’t make up her mind to give up either
of them.

“Oh, couldn’t I, *couldn’t* I see a little bit of
both?” she cried pleadingly to the boy who had
consulted her. “It’s just one day out of the
whole world you know, and I want to get everything
I can in it!”

Whatever slight restraint there might have
been in first meeting fell away at her frank eagerness,
and the boy’s expression assumed at once
an alert interest in giving her as good a time as
could be crammed into the hours before them.
Out in the little rocking boat they went dancing
over the water with the full blazing glare of the
afternoon sun across it and in their eyes. She
saw the race and cheered with the rest, though,
unless she had been told every little while, she
would not have known which boat was which.
Every few minutes she turned to laugh her supreme delight
into the equally radiant face of
her companion, and the two were as good friends
at once as if they had known each other for
years.

Long before the sport on the water was over,
however, Harold Wilbering, her new friend, insisted
that they must leave if they really wanted
to see anything of the game. She said reluctantly
that she still wanted to, so they went
bounding and leaping back over the waves and
hurriedly made their laughing way toward the
ball grounds. As they passed one of the buildings,
Peggy heard a strange tick-ticking sound
that was someway very interesting and compelling.
She felt that it meant something, and was
vaguely troubled by its persistence.

“What is that sound?” she found courage to
ask at last.

“Oh, the wireless,” her companion answered
indifferently.

.. File: 245.png

The wireless! Right down that curious looking
instrument, the thing sputtered and ticked!
Oh, how queer it was to be where all the mysteries
of the great sea were everyday commonplaces,
as the wireless evidently was to the midshipmen.
Perhaps some great ship was calling
its distress, or signaling. Perhaps those very
little sputters were the messages of a British
war ship on its way to battle with the German
cruisers! It did not take long for Peggy to picture
herself as listening at the moment to one of
the most stirring sea-messages of history—more
important than the famous, “We have met the
enemy and they are ours,” that she had once
learned about in school, back in her grammar
days. She forgot to talk to her young companion
for fully five minutes under the stimulus of this
beautiful idea!

When they came to the ball grounds and
climbed into the bleacher seats, which were the
only kind there were, the sun pouring generously
down on them all the while, Peggy thought more
of the crowd than of the game. She looked
along the rows of backs ahead of them, and envied
some of the girls for their very self-possessed,
experienced appearance, and was glad
she was not others with their too fancy clothes
and their excess of furbelows, of tulle bows, and
earrings and coat chains.

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.

She was doing her beautiful gold-tinted hair
into a twist instead of leaving it as she usually
wore it in curls. Most of the Andrews girls had
done their hair after this new fashion throughout
the winter and early spring, but Peggy was
younger than most of them and she had worn
hers down her back until to-night.

“Of course,” she mused aloud, “there isn’t
so very much use my taking any pains with it
at all, since I’m to imitate a scarecrow throughout
the evening. But then, I had decided to do
my hair this way before I knew the awful destiny
that was in store for me, and I have already
paid two good dollars for the little wreath to go
in it, so I guess I’d better fight it out on this line
if it takes all summer. Florence, will you please
stick a hair pin in here for me? I seem to need
three hands right now and I have only two
clumsy ones. Do you think I’ll do? Oh, I know
my face isn’t possible, but otherwise I’m all right,
am I?”

And she burst out laughing at the idea of a
girl who was all right but her face thinking of
going to a party at all and having a good time.

“But I must remember,” she told herself, “that
I had a good time getting that sunburn, and it
isn’t as if I hadn’t already been paid by happiness
for its awfulness.”

The pink dress didn’t look as pretty as it had
when she had tried it on before her mirror at
Andrews, because pink never did go so very well
with that odd shade of flaming red that Peggy’s
face showed. There was a bright and distinct
line, too, around her neck, all red above the line
and all white below, where her collar had protected
the skin. She tied a strip of black velvet
around this tell-tale mark, humming the while,
for it seemed that she might as well be cheerful
over this, one of the worst disasters that had
ever happened to her.

“They’ll see this black ribbon and just think
I’ve tied it too tight,” she explained to her friends
hopefully, “and that it’s choking me, making my
face so red.”

Katherine and Florence failed to see the advantage
of having them think this, but they kind-heartedly
refrained from saying so, and let
Peggy take what comfort she could out of so
plausible a belief.

In her heart of hearts, perhaps, Peggy was
remembering the occasion when she had dressed
so carefully for the matinée that she didn’t get
to the matinée at all, and was deciding that being
on hand was really more important than making
a good appearance.

She went to the hop, her spirits as light as
her dancing feet, and when Harold Wilbering
came eagerly over to her, she and he laughed at
what had happened to her face, but he discovered
what Peggy had not the least idea of for herself,
that the sunburn effect was really rather becoming.
It made her so vivid and so alive. It looked
merely as if she were blushing all the time, and
Harold liked it. And who could help enjoying
himself in talking to Peggy that evening, as she
became more and more forgetful of her tragedy,
and more and more able to give her whole attention
to just having a good time? It was rare
that so appreciative a young lady came to one
of their early hops. The boys were quite accustomed
to girls who had been to a great many
more dances than they had, and who sometimes
made them feel just a little young. But Peggy
so doted on it all, was so carried away by the
Marine band, so ready to laugh at their simplest
and most time-worn jokes, so wonderingly surprised
and naïvely gratified at their own open
admiration of her, that she took like wildfire,
and half the academy was talking about that
little Parsons girl for a week thereafter.

Peggy went back with the girls to their rooms,
her laughter just bubbling at her lips and her
sense of satisfaction perfect.

She took down her hair chattering all the
time, and when at last the three turned out the
light and crept into bed,—for Katherine and she
and Florence shared one room, Florence sleeping
on the couch and Peggy and Katherine in the
big bed, she whispered blissfully into the darkness,
“Oh, hasn’t this been a most *dazzling* day!
I don’t know when I’ve had such a lovely, lovely
time. I don’t someway think it’s just little Peggy
Parsons with a red face that went through all
that beautifulness, but instead I feel as if I’d
been a fairy princess—the change that Cinderella
experienced and all that—and, oh, how I do hate
to wake up in the morning and realize that my
coach and four has turned into pumpkin!”

“You looked nice in spite of your face, Peggy,”
said Florence. “And, someway, everybody did
seem to take an awful shine to you.”

.. File: 255.png

And then Florence’s talk drifted off to the
partners she had had, and what each one had
looked like and what they said. And whenever
she paused for breath Katherine interrupted with
the story of her adventures and in the midst of
their dialogue the fairy princess and Cinderella
and little tired red-faced Peggy Parsons, all
rolled into one, went off to sleep and dreamed
the enchanted dreams of youth.

.. File: 256.png

CHAPTER XIV—WATER-SPRITES
=========================

There is something about the first days of
spring that stirs that most primitive instinct in
every human being—the desire to move on, the
nomadic impulse, the explorer sense.

Even the girls at Andrews, with heads full of
friendships, coming examinations and summer
plans, felt this world-old impulse. School was
too small. The roads and fields that they knew
so well, sweet with apple blossoms as they were,
were all too tame and familiar to satisfy this
longing that had made itself apparent by the
time the engrossing subject of Annapolis was out
of the way.

The girls yawned rudely in classes, no matter
what sharp words were spoken to correct them.
They even stretched their young arms out side-ways
and rested them on the next chairs. They
turned wistful eyes away from their books out
toward the sunlight-sprinkled world and wondered
what was in it beyond those immediate
roofs and trees that they could see.

Finally Peggy could stand it no longer. “Well,
girls,” she announced one bright Saturday afternoon
when there was no more school work to
consider for the day, “we’re all going hunting
for the source of something—we’re going exploring.
Anybody know a nice, twisty river that
we can take for the work? One without too
many crabs in it, because, of course, we may
want to wade.”

The girls were full of enthusiasm at once.
Their first thought, as usual, was what they
were to take to eat. Several voted for fudge, but
Peggy scornfully reminded them that this was
an unheard of diet for explorers, and besides
she expected to be ravenous by the time they’d
walked a few miles. So a more comprehensive
luncheon was planned, without the bacon this
time, for they did not want to build fires, and
a small, bright, quickly-running stream was decided
upon for the object of their exploration.
To reach this it was necessary that they take a
suburban car and ride quite a distance into unfamiliar
country, which was just what they had
wished. Not those same old roads that they had
walked to powder, not those same old rivers
on the side of which every class had made its
fires since the opening of the school, but a brand
new part of the country where foot of Andrews
girl had never trod before, to their knowledge,—this
was ideal, and it added considerably to
their delight that Mrs. Forest had given permission
for their class to go without taking a teacher
along.

They all wore white shirtwaists, white skirts,
white shoes, and white linen tennis hats. They
looked rather like a party of sunny angels as
they boarded their car. They realized that they
made a good appearance, but they were not prepared
for the effect they had upon a certain
motherly-looking woman who watched them file
in and take their seats. She gazed at them very
hard and her mouth curved into the most wistful
smile the girls had ever seen, and tears came
suddenly to her eyes as she glanced hastily away.
The other people in the car breathed deep in
sympathy. But the girls could no more have
understood the vivid impression of youth and
loveliness they had given than they could have
deciphered the Rosetta stone. In their hearts
were only the most prosaic thoughts of dainty
little sandwiches and stuffed olives, with an undernote
of healthy happiness and rampageous
good spirits.

“What can be more beautiful than a group
of young girls?” a woman was saying to her
neighbor. “Aren’t they just ideal, all in white
that way—those pretty girlish dresses and those
white shoes and stockings—”

If she had known the girls’ most eager thought
in connection with those white shoes and stockings
was to throw them as far away as possible
onto a rock in the river they had set out to explore,
and in regard to those white dresses, their
dearest wish was to fasten them up about their
knees while, with all manner of joyous shouts
and yells they should go wading below a waterfall.

As they approached the suburban stop where
they had been advised to get off, as being near
the river they were going to, they gathered up
their boxes of luncheon and crowded to the door
of the car, humming very softly one of their
favorite school songs.

And when the car stopped and let them off in
a beautiful strip of country woodland, their
voices came out louder and they went swinging
along in the direction of the stream whose cool
rippling music they were so eager to hear. They
had to climb several fences, but they had been
told that these woods were always open to school
and college girls, for there was a larger college
nearer than Andrews, and the girls haunted the
place. There was nobody in sight to-day, however,
and they scrambled to the top of gateways
and then jumped down into each other’s arms,
knocking each other down and laughing and
shouting until the woods echoed with their noise.

The stream was broad and rather shallow and
was rushing along over its little shining stones
at a great rate. Now and then there was the
silver flash of minnows or the sluggish shadow
of swimming tadpoles. But, look as they would,
they could not see the dreaded green-brown menace
of a crab, so their happiness was complete.

.. File: 262.png

There were smooth gleaming rocks rising high
out of the water everywhere. Once this stream
had been a powerful river and it had perhaps
tumbled these rocks here and then worn them
down to the delightful shininess they showed
now. Fascinatingly enough they could walk out
on them, stepping with care from one to another
until they were in the middle of the stream, and
then they could pursue their way upstream in
the same exciting way for quite a distance. The
girls were in all attitudes, wildly trying to keep
their balance and make this fascinating journey
at the same time, when there was a splash, a
shout, and then a dripping figure emerged between
two large rocks and held up its wet hands
pitifully for help.

Under her wet hair and through the water
streaming down her face, the girls recognized
Peggy, much more slimpsy in her white dress
than she had been a minute ago.

.. File: 263.png

“First one in!” they greeted her catastrophe
uproariously, and in delighted unanimity they
sat down on the rocks wherever they happened to
be and pulled off their shoes and stockings and
turned up their skirts, and then sliding gracefully
down, wriggled their contented toes in the
water and shrieked as it encroached coldly on
their ankles.

In a minute more they were all in, splashing
and stamping, the stones smooth under their
eager feet as they took each step.

They went on together up the stream farther
and farther, following its twisted way until they
came to a place they could not hope to climb—where
the stream made a sheer leap downwards
for a distance that was much greater than their
height, and came plashing down toward them
in a thousand rainbow lights by means of a
spreading waterfall.

“I might as well stand under that,” chortled
Peggy, “I am as shipwrecked as I can be already.
I fell flat when I tumbled off the rock back there.”

“OH—O-OH,” she cried as she sidled up to the
water and finally made her plunge into it.
Pounding down and stinging like a hundred little
sharp needles of cold, she had never felt such
breathlessness nor such elation. Over her, and
shrouding her in a gleaming mist, the water
came, and the girls stood speechless watching her
as she stood there like some Indian princess observing
the rites of the waterfall.

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.

“Is *she* going?” the tall girl demanded with
interest, pointing to this dripping apparition.

“I—don’t—think she’s planning to go to college
at all,” said Katherine hesitatingly. “I
never heard her say that she was going. I’m
her room-mate, and she’s the nicest girl in all
the world, and Hampton will never know what
it loses by not getting her.”

“She’s just the kind we want,” sighed the tall
girl. “Well, glad we met you—” Her party
started off downstream, but she turned and
called back over her shoulder, “When you come
up next fall come over and see me,—I’m Ditto
Armandale—in Macefield House.”

“Thanks, I’m Katharine Foster,” Peggy’s
room-mate called after her. “Good-bye—and
I’m really coming.”

With a friendly wave the college girls disappeared
around the first bend in the little river,
and Katherine turned to the perturbed Peggy,
expecting her to make some remark about the
ridiculous way the others had found her.

But her eyes had a faraway expression in
spite of their slightly worried look, and the remark
Peggy made was, “Oh, Katherine, Katherine,
I wish I were going to Hampton.”

Katherine started to speak, but could not, and
turned her head hastily away because the thought
of four years without Peggy, even four years
among hundreds of attractive girls like Ditto
Armandale, seemed to her at the minute but a
bleak expanse unlit by a single gleam of comfort.

“Peggy, won’t you write to your aunt and tell
her you *must* come?” she begged suddenly.
“Don’t you think she’d let you if she knew that
Florence and I and most of the girls are going?”

Peggy rubbed her moist forehead thoughtfully.
“Don’t think so,” she said, “but I might
write and—*hint* that I want to go.”

Their momentary depression passed, though,
when they sat down to eat the good things they
had brought in their boxes. Peggy kept in the
sun as much as possible, hoping to dry off before
it was time to go home. This phase came
to her more poignantly later, however, when the
other girls had put on their shoes and stockings
again and were making ready to go home.

“But mine are all wet and they won’t go on,”
mourned Peggy, “and my dress is a disgrace and
my hair isn’t very dry yet either, and when I put
my hat on little rivulets run down my face like
so many horrid young Niagaras. Oh, there *that*
shoe is on, but I can’t say there’s any special
advantage in it. Just hear the water sloshing
about when I walk! It’s a wonder I won’t take
cold out of this, but I won’t—I never do when
I’ve had a good time. Girls, keep close to me
because I’m the most awful object that ever got
on a street car and I’d much rather walk only
I wouldn’t get home for two or three days, I
guess, and these wet shoes would have dissolved
like paper long before that.”

They climbed the fences with less agility than
they had displayed in getting over them in the
first place, and they were a tired lot of girls
when they reached the car track and threw themselves
on the grass beside it.

“I hear a singing on the rails,” sighed Peggy,
“but I’m too stiff to get up. Somebody wave to
the car. Mercy, here it is already coming around
the corner. There, keep close to me, somebody
on each side,—oh, what will the people on there
think of Andrews?”

When they clambered into the car and the
whole bedraggled crowd of recent water-sprites
sank into their seats, a motherly woman from
across the aisle looked up and stared at them in
a kind of fascinated horror. Her appraising
glance missed nothing from their mud bordered
skirts and soppy shoes to their flying, tangled
hair.

She turned in some disgust to a woman who
sat beside her. “Isn’t it terrible how hoydenish
some girls are?” she asked audibly. “Now those
poor little spectacles across the aisle—somebody
ought to keep watch of them. I wish you might
have seen the lovely group of girls that rode
on my car a few hours ago when I was coming
out this way. Quite different from this messy
little party. They were all in white, as sweet as
dolls and so adorably radiant and clean and spiritual
looking. They made me think of angels.
Dear, dear, I shall never forget the picture they
made! You would not know that those little
tomboys opposite belonged to the same species
even!”

And the motherly looking woman wondered
why the tomboys all burst into a fit of uncontrollable
giggling.

.. File: 273.png

CHAPTER XV—PARSONS COURT
========================

“Peggy, hurry up and come to bed, the light
just shines in my eyes, and *shines* in my eyes,”
complained Katherine that night from her side
of the room, “and it’s so unlike you to study so
late—or aren’t you studying?”

“Nope,” answered Peggy laconically, and the
hint of tears in her voice brought Katherine to
a sitting posture, a wealth of surprised sympathy
in her face. “What’s the matter, honey?” she
asked coaxingly, “have I unknowingly used one
of your themes for scrap paper? Or has Forest
been mean again?”

Peggy looked across at her and folded a sheet
of paper as she did so. “It isn’t anything,” she
insisted.

.. File: 274.png

But Katherine guessed. “You are writing to
your aunt!” she exclaimed.

Slowly Peggy nodded. “I want everything,”
she said. “Oh, Katherine, I don’t know how it
is that when a person has so much, they can just
go on wanting and wanting and not be content
without it *all*. I know I’ve had this lovely year
with all of you and ever so many girls can’t go
away to school at all, but, Katherine, I’m—I’m
such a pig—I—I—want college, too!”

And then the tears that would not be restrained
any longer coursed down her cheeks
and fell unheeded on her blue kimono, while she
clasped her hands and rocked them in self-accusation
and despair.

“I wish you were going—I don’t know what
it will be worth without you,” moaned Katherine,
in sympathy. “But, listen, Peggy, dear, there
are lots of girls who have good times staying at
home or traveling or—even doing something
that’s lots of fun to earn money. Peggy, you
aren’t a girl who can be unhappy long, by nature.
Honestly, after you’ve once gotten over this you—you
won’t care—”

But Katherine’s voice failed her along with
her attempts at comfort.

“I can’t seem to—face it,” wept Peggy. “I
don’t know what’s the matter with me that all
of a sudden I want, want, *want* this and nothing
else in the world has any effect to comfort
me. Oh, Katherine, Katherine, since I was a
little girl I’ve kind of thought way back in my
mind that I’d get to go to college. And all this
wonderful year has drifted away just like perfume,
or something nice like that,—I don’t mean
to be poetical—and here it’s gone and I haven’t
any plans. It’s terrible to grow up, Katherine,
and to have to work out something definite for
yourself to do. I don’t want to be grown up,
Katherine, I want to be a girl for four years
more. I know I’m a pig, honey, and if there
were bigger things left to want I suppose I’d
want them, too. And even when I graduated
from college, if I did go, I guess I’d not be content,
but I’d want to be an actress and star in
something, so as to seem to be having it all.
I wish you’d been asleep instead of questioning
me, because I’ll feel awfully in the morning to
think I’ve told you all this. I—I feel badly
enough right now.”

And the goldy head went down on the folded
paper and the writing on it was soon blotted
and blurred with tears. Katherine slipped out
of bed and, running over to her room-mate,
threw her arms around her neck.

“It isn’t anything unusual to want everything
that way, honey,” she said, “I won’t have you
think that it is. Everybody in the whole world
wants it all, dear. Only *all* to some people means
different things from what it does to us. You
aren’t piggish, either, I’ve known you a whole
year and you and I have never quarreled over
anything in all that time, and that’s a record for
room-mates even at Andrews. And my folks
never flattered me by thinking me unselfish, so
it isn’t my fault things ran so smoothly—it was
your generous, happy spirit, ready to share
everything, wanting to help everybody, eager
for good times, and able to take all the other girls
into them with you. Oh, Peggy, dear, it’s the
most natural thing in the world to want things—and
I think there’s a cog loose somewhere in
the way things are run if you don’t get your wish,
that’s all. You are the very one that ought to
have college. Please don’t cry. You look so
different from my Peggy when you cry. I’m so
much more used to you laughing.”

Putting aside the friendly arms of her room-mate,
Peggy wiped her eyes and snapped out the
light. With a final little gasp of a sob she crept
into bed and covered her forlorn young face with
the bed clothes. She expected that she would
be awake all night, thinking heartbrokenly of
her troubles, but instead she had no more than
gotten snuggled down into the couch’s warmth
than she was sound asleep and not in any of her
dreams did any trouble whatsoever make its appearance.

Katherine, on the other hand, lay awake
nearly ten minutes and told Peggy in the morning,
believing it was true, of course, that she
had not slept one wink.

In due time a letter came to Peggy from her
aunt in answer to the one she had written with
so many tears that night.

  “Dear Peggy, Your letter made me think matters
  over very carefully, little girl, and I have
  gone over our resources with the disheartening
  result that I must tell you I do not see how I am
  to let you go to college this year. Now, Peggy,
  you are young and even after several years outside
  of school, it will not be too late for you to
  go to college if financial affairs turn out better.
  But just at this time, when everything is so uncertain,
  and prices are so high and so few stocks are
  paying dividends, I do not see how I can possibly
  spare enough for you to go to Hampton.
  There are a great many nice girls here, Peggy,
  about your age, who are not going to school any
  more, and never even thought of such a thing.
  I’m sure you can make quite a little social set with
  them, and I shall take you around to call on all
  of my friends, and finally give you a small coming
  out party, for every well-bred girl ought to
  care for society and desire to please by what she
  has already learned. I think that after a year of
  what quiet but agreeable society life you can have
  here at home, you will not want to go to college.
  And to tell the truth, Peggy, I have never thought
  much of college for girls. It seems to me woman’s
  place is in the home and in her own little
  social sphere. I know this letter will be a disappointment
  to you, but you are a sweet, brave
  girl, if a bit inclined to be rompish, and I’m sure
  you’ll agree with me in time when you’ve had a
  chance to think things over. Regretting that I
  cannot let you have your wish, though, whether
  I approve or not, I am,
  
  Very lovingly yours,
  
  --:sc:`Aunt Mattie`.“

.. File: 280.png

Peggy’s mouth twitched into her characteristic
smile, dimple and all, and she gazed somewhat
ruefully back over the closely written sheet.

“Fancy me a society lady,” she said to herself.
“Oh, I never imagined even in my wildest
dreams that I should get to be that—nor ever
wanted it, either, if I tell the truth. I love parties
and I adore people and hope always to have
lots of them around me, men and women and
children and everybody. But just to make a
sort of career out of visiting and dancing—oh,
I want college.”

All the indefinite longing that the spring
brings with it took the shape in Peggy’s mind
of this one paramount desire. If she could go
to college she would be happy. If she could not,
she must be miserable. Ashamed of herself for
her attitude she might be, but crush the wish she
could not. Katherine had had her application
in at Hampton for three years now and had so
been assigned a room on campus with another
girl named Gloria Hazeltine. Peggy felt that already
she was dropping out of her room-mate’s
life. The other girls were all planning their
next year, at table, outside the class-rooms, on
their way to Vespers on Sundays. But she had
nothing to plan. And the idea began to form
in her mind that if she had some definite idea
it would be better—even if the idea involved
something hard and unheard of like earning her
own living. At least there would be excitement
in the contemplation of actually doing it.

So one day when all the rest were talking
Hampton, Hampton, and nothing but Hampton,
and when Daphne Damon turned abruptly to
Peggy and said: “Peg, infant, what are you
going to do next year?” she answered quickly,
“Clerk in a store, I think.” And their expressions
were mingled astonishment and—yes, she
caught it, envy.

.. File: 282.png

“My goodness, Peggy, wouldn’t that be
lovely,” gasped Florence Thomas. “Who would
ever think of anything so daring but you? You’ll
certainly have more to write about in your letters
than we will, but will you promise to keep
up a correspondence with us, nevertheless, so
we can hear how the famous experiment is
going?”

Peggy only laughed.

A while later, in their room, Katherine excitedly
handed Peggy a letter she had just been
reading.

“From your substitute, Peggy,” she said, “or,
in other words, my room-mate-to-be. The registrar
gave her my address, just as she had given
me hers, and she was sweet enough to write me
a let’s-get-acquainted letter. I never thought of
doing it. She has a nice name, hasn’t she—Gloria
Hazeltine.”

.. File: 283.png

Mechanically Peggy took the note and read it
slowly:

“My dear Miss Foster Who is to be My Room-mate”:
it began, “Or hadn’t I better begin right
away by saying Katherine, and then we won’t
feel so strange when we talk to each other really
for the first time—”

Peggy looked wistfully up from the letter to
her room-mate’s glowing face.

“I won’t tell you any of my faults,” she read
on, “because you’ll have a year to find those out,
and I think for those things, a year is long
enough. The main purpose of this letter is to
so mislead you that you will think I haven’t any
faults and then, when you finally see me, it will
take such a long time for readjustment that, before
you’ve really found me out, I shall have
made you like me a little for good and keeps.
I’ve never had a room-mate myself, and I hope
you haven’t, so that it will be equally new to
both of us to have to consider someone else’s
taste and wishes at every turn. What color do
you like best? I am beginning to plan my things,
and we might as well get together on a color
scheme so that our couch covers won’t be too
jarringly different, and my flamboyant cushions
won’t be shamed by some mouse-like ones of
yours, and vice-versa.

“I am looking forward to rooming with you
because I have you all planned out in my mind.
I sit and think slowly ‘Katherine Foster’ just like
that, and then *you* rise before me. Only perhaps
it isn’t you at all. But I promise not to be
disappointed in you whatever you are like, and
won’t you write back and make me the same
promise?

“Good-bye, from your much excited Next-Year’s
Room-mate,

“:sc:`Gloria Hazeltine`.”

.. File: 285.png

Peggy dropped the letter back on the desk and
sat down on her couch, her hands clasped over
her knees disconsolately, and her eyes unhappily
looking into the future. Finally she rose with
a mighty sigh and, turning her back on her room-mate,
she began to dress for the afternoon with
infinite care.

“Where are you going, Peggy?” Katherine
asked, “and may I come along?”

“You could,” said Peggy after a reluctant
pause, “if you wanted to and if I didn’t have a
date all arranged with somebody who told me to
come just by myself.”

She realized that her reply sounded ungracious,
but the letter from Katherine’s next year’s
room-mate was vivid in her mind, and she felt
that after all she wasn’t going to be missed. It
meant so much to her not to go to college and
yet nothing to anyone else. It is human nature
to want to be missed, and Peggy couldn’t help
her twinge of disappointment in the fact that
her absence was going to mean so little.

Mr. Huntington had asked her to spend the
afternoon in a walk with him, as he had said he
wanted to get her opinion on something he was
planning, and as he often did nice things for
the townspeople now, Peggy felt sure this was
another such venture and that he merely wanted
the shining-eyed approval she was always certain
to give.

He had said, “Nobody but you, this time,
Peggy,” and yet, when she went down to the
gate to meet him, there stood his grandson also,
smiling as broadly as the old man, and both of
them seemed to be in some delightful secret that
she didn’t know about at all. Mr. Huntington directed
their walk toward a new part of town that
was just being built up.

“It’s not generally known that I own all this,”
he told Peggy, “but I do, and it’s I who am
building it up. Now look down this tiny street—look
hard and tell me what you think of it!”

“Oh!” cried Peggy, staring down the dear
little new street with great interest,—great
enough to make her forget the thing she couldn’t
have, for the moment—for there was a double
row of adorable little bungalows, just newly
painted, as neat and trim and attractive as any
houses ever were in the world, and the street
itself seemed to be just a miniature affair, with
only six houses on each side and then ending in
a vine covered wall. “Oh, it’s darling!” cried
the irrepressible Peggy, “I just love it! Who
could have imagined any such dear, doll-like little
street, with twelve such lovely bungalows on
it! This street ought to have a wonderful name,
Mr. Huntington—don’t you think so, Jim?
Please, please, Mr. Huntington, if it’s not already
named, let Jim and me pick out what to
call it. I just know that we could find a name
that would satisfy everybody who ever took one
of those cute houses to live in as long as they
stand.”

She looked up into the old man’s face, the
sunlight streaming down into hers, and she
clasped her hands in her eagerness, and it was
hard to see how he could have had the heart to
refuse her. But he did.

“The name is chosen already,” he said with
a kind of chuckle. And Jim only grinned at the
sight of Peggy’s helplessly falling hands, and
her evident disappointment.

“We—ell,” she sighed, “so many things to
stand to-day—what is it? I know it isn’t as nice
as I had in mind, is it, Jim?”

“Nicer,” said that traitor Jim.

“Well, what, then?”

“Parsons Court,” said the old man, smiling
down on her curiously, and then laughing toward his
grandson who laughed back appreciatively.

“Parsons—?” her breath came in a little astonished
gasp.

“That’s it,” Mr. Huntington repeated, “and
do you know why?”

But Peggy must have been a daring young
guesser indeed had she been able to guess correctly
why, as the old man’s next remark showed.

“It’s *yours!*” he told her, pressing a legal looking
paper into her hand, “the whole street was
built and planned and named for you, and you
shall have the rent of these little houses, or you
can sell them when you wish. I thought if you
just rented them, while you are in college, they’d
bring you in a larger income than most of the
girls know how to spend.”

Peggy threw herself right down on the ground
and began sobbing. It was too wonderful—it
was simply the wildest magic! Oh, how beautiful it
was to have somebody like her so well and
want her to be happy! Then as abruptly as she
had cast herself down, she sprang up, and laughing
and crying at once, she seized Mr. Huntington’s
hand, and pumped it up and down, and
clung to it and tried to talk and could not.

Jim turned his head away before her great
joy and smiled quietly all by himself. She was
such a flyaway sort of Peggy, tears one minute
and laughter the next, and all the past and all
the future were as nothing beside the present
moment.

He was recalling all that he himself and the
old man beside him owed to this same warm-hearted
girl, and he felt that the debt was not
nearly canceled by Parsons Court.

“Oh, Jim,” she was turning to him now, “a
few minutes ago I was wicked enough to be almost
sorry you saved me from that storm so long
ago. But now, oh, Jim, I thank you now all
over again for having saved me, so that I can
be here now and have this lovely, lovely thing
happen to me. How good people are to me!
Oh, I must remember to be a regular *angel* to
everybody I meet just to pay up for everybody’s
always being so wonderful to me. Mr. Huntington,
I *love* Parsons Court, and every house in it,
and I’m so stingy I hate to rent any of them, but
just want to come and live in them all myself,
one after the other. But renting them means
college, so please, Mr. Huntington, get me some
tenants just as fast as you can,—and I never was
so happy in my life, or didn’t ever expect to be!”

The old man’s face glowed with pleasure, and
it was easy to see that he was as happy as Peggy.

If anyone ever walked on clouds that person
was Peggy as she and her two friends made their
way back toward Andrews. How brightly the
sun shone! She knew it had never looked like
that before. How beautiful everybody was—how
everybody’s face was beaming as she passed,
school children, old women, the men on the delivery
wagons—all, all lit for her by a subtle
glory that was spreading and spreading over the
whole world. Her friends just laughed at her
raptures, but it was an understanding laugh, and
Peggy liked them for it. Was there anything
at this minute, or anybody, that she *didn’t* like?
Her heart was so full of happiness that she
wished she might share it and *share* it until it
was a little less full, so that it wouldn’t bubble
over so uncontrollably.

She was only able to look up into Mr. Huntington’s
face and smile for good-bye when they
reached the Andrews gateway, and her glance
then swept on to Jim, while the sunlight just
poured itself down over the little group as they
stood there together.

Then she turned and ran into the house as
fast as she could go, running up the stairs to
Katherine in the unladylike fashion of two at a
time, and if it were possible to slide up banisters
as well as down them Peggy would have slid up
in order to get there quicker.

“Katherine! Katherine!” she cried, bursting
in at the door, “I’m going, I’m going—it’s all
magic, but it’s true and I’m going to Hampton!”

Katherine threw aside her schoolbooks and
plunged across the room into her room-mate’s
arms. “Oh, I’m so glad—Peggy!” she exclaimed
joyfully.

And the two girls sat down and planned for
another year together as happy as this one at
Andrews had been, and all the time through
Peggy’s mind went rhythmically the refrain of
“College, College, College.”

Peggy’s first year at Hampton will be told
about in “Peggy Parsons, a Hampton Freshman.”

.. class:: center

    END

-----

.. class:: center

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.. class:: center

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.. class:: center

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 | 9. Peggy Parsons Hampton Freshman — *Sharp*
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 | 11. Polly — *Meade*
 | 12. World of Girls — *Meade*

.. class:: center

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.. _pg_end_line:

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