Peggy Parsons at Prep School Part 4

"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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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."

"Hard! Why, it's gorgeous! Oh, if we only can get our ice-box princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sured 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," a.s.sented 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.

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."

And then the collision happened.

"Oh, oh, oh," gasped Peggy as she and Katherine rolled over each other, a whirling melange 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 b.u.mps 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?"