The Little Red Chimney Part 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

_Which shows Miss Bentley recovering from a fit of what Uncle Bob calls Cantankerousness; in which a shipwrecked letter is brought to light, and Dr. Prue is called again to visit the child of the Park Superintendent._

"And he turned into a splendid prince (he had been one all the time really, you know), and he laid all his riches at Violetta's feet, and made her a princess, because she had been true to him through thick and thin."

Virginia's voice rose in triumphant climax.

"That's all very fine in a fairy-tale, Virginia, and it is an extremely good one for a little girl like you to make up out of her own head. But you know in real life it is different." Margaret Elizabeth gazed pensively into the fire.

Virginia, p.r.o.ne upon the hearth-rug, was disposed to argue what she did not understand. "How different?"

"Well, in a fairy-tale you can have things as you want them, but in real life you get tangled up in what other people want, and with duty and common sense; and when you determine to follow your--" Margaret Elizabeth was going to say "heart," but changed to "intuitions," "you are left high and dry on a desert island."

Virginia was to be excused if she failed to make head or tail of this.

"I wish the Candy Man would come back," she remarked irrelevantly. "He was much nicer than Tim. He liked fairy-tales. He said he was coming some time."

"Oh, did he?" said Miss Bentley.

The reference to a desert island, and a disposition to quarrel with fairy-tales, go to show that while she was decidedly more like herself than in the last chapter, her recovery was not yet complete. In fact Margaret Elizabeth was suffering from the irritability that so often accompanies convalescence. Cantankerousness was Uncle Bob's word for it, and he defended it with all the eloquence of which he was master, his finger on the page in the dictionary where it was to be found in good and regular standing.

It really did not matter what you called it; the point was, that in an argument with her aunt, Margaret Elizabeth had gone further than she intended; had said what had better have been left unsaid. This she confessed to Dr. Prue.

"Let me see your tongue," commanded that professional lady, regarding her searchingly.

Margaret Elizabeth displayed the unruly member, laughing as she did so.

"What did you say to Mrs. Pennington?"

"We were speaking," Margaret Elizabeth answered meekly, "of grat.i.tude, and Aunt Eleanor said, as you are always hearing people say, that there is little or none of it in the world. You see, in some matter which came up in the Colonial Dames, Nancy Lane sided against her. 'And after all I've done for her!' cried Aunt Eleanor. I said I thought grat.i.tude was an overrated virtue anyway, and that to expect a person to vote your way because you had been good to her, was a kind of graft."

"Humph!" said Dr. Prue.

"I know it was a dreadful, dreadful thing to say." Tears were in Margaret Elizabeth's eyes. "When she has been loveliness itself to me.

There it is, you see. I have thought about it, and thought about it, until I'm all mixed up."

"What did your aunt say?"

"She was very dignified. She had not expected to hear such a thing from me. Then she walked away."

"I hope you asked her pardon."

"I had no chance. She has gone to Chicago--was on her way to the station then. I will, of course."

"For a young thing your ideas are not bad, though your problem is entangled in foolish convention, personal pride and so on. But neither you nor I was born to set the world right. Now cheer up and think no more about it for the present. Be ready at two o'clock to go to the park with me. The superintendent's child is ill again."

Having delivered her prescription, Dr. Prue left, and her patient returned to her hearth-stone and an endeavour to be honest with herself. Virginia had interrupted this most difficult process with her fairy-tale. While it could not be said to bear upon the situation, after she had left Margaret Elizabeth was conscious of a faint lightening of the fog.

As they sped smoothly toward the park, in the new electric, Margaret Elizabeth driving, Dr. Prue exclaimed, "There, I'm forgetting that letter again." Unfastening her bag she held it open while she continued, "I hope you'll forgive whoever is to blame, but when the hall was being cleaned yesterday, James fished this out of the umbrella jar. Dear knows how it got there or when; it looks as if it had been in a shipwreck."

She produced a stained and sorry-looking missive from her bag. "You can just make out the address, the postmark is quite gone," she added, laying it in her companion's lap. "You haven't missed an important letter, have you?"

"Not that I know of," Margaret Elizabeth replied with a laugh that was a bit unsteady. "It is probably nothing of value." She kept her gaze on the road ahead. "Just slip it in my pocket, please."

All the rest of the way to the park her heart thumped uncomfortably.

Could it be? Of course not, it was an advertis.e.m.e.nt. Why get excited?

Meanwhile she chatted pleasantly with Dr. Prue.

"All you need is fresh air and a simple life for a while. Your colour has come back wonderfully," the doctor remarked as they drew up at the cottage gate. "Will you wait for me here?"

"If you don't mind, I think I'll go into the park, and if I'm not back by the time you are ready, don't wait. I can take the street car."

Turning in at the entrance to the park, Margaret Elizabeth was for a fleeting moment aware of a Candy Wagon standing at the curb a few yards away. There was nothing unusual in this except the odd way in which it fitted into the situation, and the next moment she had forgotten everything but the letter in her hand.

She walked slowly down the path. The April sunshine sifted through a faint and feathery greenness overhead, the air was clear and fresh. She was thinking that she had seen just one little sc.r.a.p of the Candy Man's writing--on the card accompanying the Christmas basket; and this on the letter was blurred and stained, yet she was sure of it. He had written.

She had been sure he would. She was glad. She would be honest with herself. She wanted him for a friend. In many ways she liked him better than any one she had met this winter. She wanted to know more about him.

She tried to tear the letter open, but for all it was so damaged the paper had remained tough. She would wait to read it till she reached the summer house. That little vine-hung arbour had been in her thought ever since Dr. Prue proposed to bring her down to the park. She had a foolish desire to sit there and look at the river, and go on being honest with herself.

Margaret Elizabeth, mounting the steps and looking at her letter as she did so, was confronted by somebody who started up in surprise from the bench where she had sat with her flowers that autumn day.

For one surprised moment she and the stranger faced each other, then Miss Bentley exclaimed, "I saw the wagon at the gate, but I didn't know it was yours." And then the mischief faded into simple honest gladness as she held out her hand. "I certainly did not expect to see you," she added, "but you are an unexpected sort of person."

"Nothing so wonderful as the chance of meeting you occurred to me for a moment," the Candy Man a.s.sured her. "In fact I was not certain you cared to see me." Those same pleasant eyes, so emphatically not the eyes of Augustus, looked into hers questioningly.

Margaret Elizabeth held up the letter. "It was shipwrecked," she said.

"I got it only a few minutes ago. I haven't read it. I thought it was you who didn't care to be friends."

The Candy Man did not exactly understand how a letter could be shipwrecked in an overland journey of ten hours, but he dismissed it as of no importance. "It isn't worth reading now," he said. "It was just to make my adieus and ask if some time when I had lived down my past,"

here he smiled, "I might come back and tell you my strange story. I was counting on your willingness to be friends. You remember you said it would do no harm to hope."

"Oh, did I? And when you did not hear from me, what did you think?

Honestly," asked Margaret Elizabeth.

"I thought of course there must be a reason. A shipwreck did not occur to me."

"Do you mean a reason for not being friends? But you came."

"The suspense was too much for me. I haven't many friends; and besides, this is on the way to Texas."

"So you are going to Texas this time?"

It seemed the Candy Man had heard of an opening there.

Margaret Elizabeth wanted to ask why he had come to the park, but something told her not to; instead she said, looking away to the shining river, "I know of no reason why we should not be friends. So I am ready to hear the story you speak of. Is it more strange than the adventures of a Candy Wagon?" Her eyes came back and met his as they had done the day when the conversation turned upon fairy G.o.dmothers. Margaret Elizabeth was not spoiled.

"It is more serious," was his reply. "In fact, it is very serious.