Peggy Parsons at Prep School Part 16

"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."

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 bl.u.s.ter without, the library looked as cozy and homelike as a room could well be when only one person lives in it.

"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.

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 gla.s.s k.n.o.bs. 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing 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 b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter, the sugar, and the alcohol, the b.u.t.ter, 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 b.u.t.ter, and ask for two helps."

The b.u.t.ter b.a.l.l.s remained untouched on each of ten plates as a result, and were finally gathered together very surrept.i.tiously 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 un.o.bserved.