Peggy Parsons at Prep School Part 15

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.

"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 pa.s.sing 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 cla.s.smates?"

"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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sure 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.

"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 princ.i.p.al 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 ba.n.a.l 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 pa.s.s 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 ama.s.sed 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?"