Peggy Parsons at Prep School Part 8

"'You shall be paid back every penny, father,' she said, 'if you have to wait until this baby grows up and earns enough to cancel his father's debts. It is not likely we could meet so great an obligation by our own unaided efforts-and Jo is not a moneymaker, but my son shall be trained to think of nothing but making money until the whole amount is ready to return to you. We shan't send you little dribbles,-not one cent until the entire amount is gotten together-oh, I know how much it is, I have kept track. We shall scrimp and save and earn and plan until you are paid. Nor will you ever hear of us again if I can help it until my son stands some day in your doorway with his check in his hand to pay you back.' And with that they went away-"

"And they haven't ever paid you back? And that is why you were poor for so long?" questioned Katherine, believing that at last she had the solution.

Mr. Huntington smiled at the absurdity of this.

"They haven't paid me back, but the sum they owe me scarcely leaves a perceptible hole in my fortune. No, but the year after they left I happened to read the notice in a New York paper of my son-in-law's death. No address was given, nothing but just the notice and that was all. Knowing my daughter as I did, I was sure that, at whatever cost, she would persevere in her determination to pay me back and would keep to the letter of her declaration even to the point of going out into the world and earning her own living. The thought of that beautiful, carefully brought-up girl, with so harrowing a responsibility on her shoulders was more than I could bear and I employed detective agents in a vain endeavor to find her and her boy. I myself searched everywhere in the east, but, will you believe me-never from the day she left my house to this-have I found one trace of her or been encouraged, in any way to hope that I should ever see her face again. Now do you begin to understand? Now can you think it natural, perhaps, that I should want to live as poorly as possible, and deny myself as I knew that poor girl was doing? Could I continue in luxury when she was in want? Only by making myself suffer under the most rigid economy, with the idea that every penny I could save and add to my fortune I would bequeath to her boy, in case he could ever be found, has made my life possible to endure. I have felt bitterly toward almost everyone-I don't know why. And I never expected to have in my life again the sunshine that you and the rest of my sixty little friends, have brought to me to-day."

Peggy drew a long breath. "Well, it's been a real Thanksgiving, then, hasn't it? And I'm so glad, Mr. Huntington, I'm so glad you liked the party-and I-I-I'm sorry about-"

"Do you know," Katherine broke in, "I think it's all coming out right. I never had such a funny feeling. But someway I seem to be sure that Mr.

Huntington will find his grandson right soon-I don't know why I should feel this way, but I do."

"Ca.s.sandra," murmured Peggy. "We're just having the Fall of Troy in Greek cla.s.s now, Mr. Huntington, and Katherine is carried away by the idea of being a prophetess. It _would_ be nice if we could see the future," she added wistfully, "but I always feel as if I had more happiness in the present than I could really take care of,-and if I was always looking ahead to more-"

"You," said Mr. Huntington, "yes, _you_ would feel that way. Most people would say that the gift of prophecy was withheld from us in order that we might not see so much grief and hardship ahead of us that we would lose the incentive to go on."

But Peggy was so far out of sympathy with that point of view that she laughed.

The early darkness of the winter afternoon began to deepen in the room and blur all the shadows together. The dancing firelight did its best to fight off the dusk, leaping up with spurting little flames and glowing fiercely red at its heart. But the purple and gray twilight deepened steadily into black everywhere except in the one bright corner of the room where the flames still kept guard.

"Well," said Peggy, sighing, and untangling herself from the comfortable chair in which she had been curled, "time for us to go home, I suppose-oo-oo-out into all that cold after all this warmth! My hundred dollars, Mr. Huntington-I don't know what I'll do with it-" she puckered her brow thoughtfully, "I don't know anyone else to give a party to so-"

"Buy a big fur coat with it, like some of the other girls wore," advised the old man, "then you'll never think about going out into the cold as anything but a pleasure."

"Oh,-a fur coat!" cried Peggy, "why, mine-mine has just the mangiest bit of a fur collar, and I've been proud enough of that-wait, just _wait_ till I get a wonderful young caracal!"

With their hands linked closely together in Peggy's m.u.f.f the two girls made their way down the walk, and at the street they turned back and waved cheerily to the silhouetted figure that still watched them against the glowing doorway of what had once been Gloomy House.

CHAPTER VIII-CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS

The days and weeks seemed to fly by after that, each one full of interest to Peggy, who liked Andrews better and better and was increasingly glad each hour that she had come. Through Mr. Huntington's help she was able to do a great many delightful things for other people, and she took happy advantage of his warm interest in her projects.

December rushed along toward Christmas and Peggy began to feel just a trifle sad because her aunt had written nothing about her coming home for the holidays, while almost all the other girls were going. She rather hated to think of the empty halls of Andrews in vacation time with no company other than that of Mrs. Forest. But one day Katherine had looked beamingly up from a letter and had then jumped up and thrown her arms around Peggy's neck with the explanation that Peggy was invited home with her by all of Katherine's folks.

Oh, what an enthusiastic preparation began then, what long discussions as to whether to take the blue crepe de chine or the golden satin, what oodles of postcards were dispatched to friends with the good news and new temporary address on them!

To be part of the great business of going away for vacation! Peggy's heart thrilled every time an expressman tramped through the halls bearing some girl's trunk on his broad shoulders. Any afternoon now they might come for her trunk, hers and Katherine's, packed delightfully in one, after many friendly quarrels as to which one should have the left hand tray and which the right and who could lay her shoes in the lower compartment and which should take her manicure set, since one would do for both girls, and trunk room was precious.

When, seated at last, breathless and full of antic.i.p.ation, in a taxi with their trunk up on top, the two girls waved through the window to those who had not yet gone, Peggy was too happy to speak, and two bright red spots burned in her dimpling cheeks and her eyes were as blue with excitement as electric sparks.

She had never ridden on a train-a Pullman-before with just girls as company. Her aunt had always taken her the few places she had been. Yet now she was actually buying her ticket herself and checking her trunk, and then boarding a great, wonderful, cross-country de luxe train,-she and Katherine, all by themselves, with as grown-up _sang-froid_ as if they had "all the while been conductors or brakemen," Katherine expressed it joyously.

The porter put their suit-cases under their berths, and Peggy's little gloved hand dropped a quarter nonchalantly into his palm while she tried to twist her eager, excited mouth into a traveled expression.

"Well," murmured Katherine, settling back comfortably on the plush seat, "we're really on our way. Oh, Peggy, I'm so glad you're going with me-oh, won't it be fun to introduce you to father and mother and brother Jack and the canary bird!"

They had taken an early afternoon train, and it was a long while to wait for dinner. The wonder and glory of the dinner Peggy was already picturing.

"I'm hungry just thinking about it," she said, when the train was well under way.

"Let's have the porter get us something," suggested Katherine, "what would you like-a lemonade?"

"OO-ooo," breathed Peggy, rapturously, "can he get it for us?"

"Why, you can order _anything_ on these good trains," declared Katherine grandly. "A little later we'll get some cards and look up two girls to play bridge-the train's full of our girls and people from the colleges.

Then we'll go back to the observation car and-"

Peggy shivered blissfully. "My," she said, "isn't life full of experiences, though?"

"Shall we wear our hats into the diner, Peggy?" asked Katherine, importantly, when the windows of the train were squares of blackness speckled by flying snow whirling past and the waiter had gone through calling out, "Dinner is served in the dining car in the rear ...

first-call."

"Is that the thing to do?" hesitated Peggy-"and must we wear our coats, too? I'd rather put our hats into these paper hat bags the porter brought a while ago, and leave our coats here, and-and just go back in a real homelike appearance."

"All right," said Katherine, smoothing back her pretty hair before the tiny oblong mirror in their section, "and, oh, Peggy, how hungry I am!"

With the excitement of a brand new experience shining in their eyes, their youthful heads held erect as they walked, and their little serge skirts swishing over their silk petticoats, the two girls went down the aisle in growing and pleasant consciousness of being observed by many, through car after car of the long train in their hungry search for the diner.

Each of the vestibules was snow-powdered and slippery and cold-oh, so cold, and it seemed that always just as they came to one the train lurched and shook so as to nearly knock them off their feet.

And then, all of a sudden, there they were in the diner itself-but what was this mob-this perfect horde of other people doing there standing patiently lined up against the long narrow wall before they came to the table part of the car?

"Katherine!" cried Peggy in consternation, "they're waiting to get in.

We'll _starve_ before our turn comes!"

And all the long patient row of people laughed, for nowhere else in traveling is there a more open and friendly spirit than among those poor patient and hungry sufferers lined up to wait their turn to be served at dinner. Groups returning began to push by them after a while, their faces as satisfied in expression as the others were anxious.

"You see," Katherine thought it out, "we came at the first call, but our car was so far away that by the time we could get back here, all the people from the nearer cars had gotten ahead of us."

But once seated facing each other at a little table, with the electric candle shedding its radiant light on the white cloth before them, and with the pale snow outside fluttering against the windows, and all so warm and comfortable inside, the tedium of waiting was forgotten and all things beyond the scope of the immediate attractive present were blotted out from their contented spirits.

They leaned their elbows on the table and looked across at each other with blissful satisfaction.

"Peggy," said Katherine, and "Katherine," began Peggy eagerly, and then both in the same breath they demanded of each other the answer to the momentous problem of the moment, "What are we going to eat?"

Never had a menu seemed as full of wonderful possibilities as that one, never had "Milk-fed chicken with Virginia ham" tasted finer when it was brought, and never, _never_ had two more healthy young appet.i.tes been brought into play than Katherine and Peggy manifested while the train rocked along with them at breakneck speed taking them faster and faster and faster right into the heart of Christmas vacation.

After the edge of their hunger had been worn off and they had turned their attention more delicately to ice cream and _demi-ta.s.se_, their thoughts drifted backward to events at Andrews, which seemed already very much in the dim and distant past.

"Katherine, when you said you felt as if Mr. Huntington would soon find his grandson, did you have any reason for saying that, or was it just to comfort him?" Peggy inquired reminiscently.

"No, honestly, Peggy," insisted Katherine, "I could feel it in my mind just like anything that it will happen. Did you notice I didn't say anything about his daughter? That was because I had no such feeling about her-so you see it wasn't just to make him feel better at all. It's strange, isn't it, how thoughts about the future come to you sometimes?"