Peggy Parsons at Prep School Part 6

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 ap.r.o.ns 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 a.s.sistant, 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 princ.i.p.al 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 att.i.tudes 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 a.s.surance, "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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.mps 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."

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 cla.s.s or otherwise, to anything in the United States that you may want."

The girls interrupted with joyous laughter.

"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.

"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 t.i.tter 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 coa.r.s.est 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 h.o.a.rding 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 s.p.a.ce 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt,

"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.

"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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 n.o.body 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts,-when she held it before her face and looked at it she didn't see anything bright and fair at all!