Peggy Parsons at Prep School Part 20

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,

---- _Aunt Mattie_."

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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.signed 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 cla.s.s-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.

"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 subst.i.tute, 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."

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,

"_Gloria Hazeltine_."

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, "n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed, 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.