The Little Red Chimney Part 2

Being without as yet any theories, consistently democratic, she regarded him as a friend and brother. A state of society in which the position of Candy Man was next the throne, would have seemed perfectly logical to Virginia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIRGINIA]

"You don't look much like Tim," she volunteered, dangling her legs from the carriage block. Her hair was dark and severely bobbed; her miniature nose was covered with freckles, and she squinted a little.

"No?" responded the Candy Man.

"Tim was Irish," she continued.

During business hours conversation of necessity took on a disjointed character. Unless you had great power of concentration you forgot in the intervals what you had been talking about. When a group of High School boys had been served and had gone their hilarious way Virginia began again. "You know the house with the Little Red Chimney?" she asked.

The Candy Man did.

"Well, a nice old man named Uncle Bob lives there, and I asked him why that chimney was red, and he said because it was new. A branch of a tree fell on the old one. The tree where the squirrel house is, you know."

The Candy Man remembered the tree.

"He said the doctor was going to have it painted, but he kind of liked it red, and so did her ladyship."

"And who might her ladyship be?" the Candy Man inquired.

"That's what I asked him, and he said, 'You come over and see,' and then he said--now listen to this, for it's just like a story." Virginia lifted an admonishing finger. "He said, whenever I saw smoke coming out of that Little Red Chimney, I might know her ladyship had come to town.

You'd better believe I'm going to watch. And what do you think! I can see it from our dining-room window!" she concluded.

"Most interesting," said the Candy Man politely, without the least idea how interesting it really was.

Virginia's gaze suddenly fastened on a small book lying on the seat of the Candy Wagon, and she had seized it before its owner could protest.

"What a funny name," she said. "'E p i c t e t u s.' What does that spell? And what made you cut a hole in this page? It looks like a window."

The page was a fly leaf, from which a name, possibly that of a former owner, had been removed. Below it the Candy Man's own name was now written.

"It was so when I got it," he answered, holding out his hand for it. He had no mind to have his book in any other keeping, for somewhere within its leaves lay a crimson flower.

Before she returned it Virginia examined the back. "Vol. I, what does that mean?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer she tossed it back to him, and ran to join the other pigeons.

From this time Virginia began to be almost as constant a visitor as the Reporter. She had a way of bursting into conversation without any preface whatever, speaking entirely from the fullness of her heart at the moment.

"I'd give anything in the world to be pretty," she remarked one day, resting her school bag on the carriage block and sighing deeply.

"But now honestly," said the Candy Man, regarding her gravely, "it seems to me you are a very nice-looking little girl, and who knows but you may turn out a great beauty some day? That is the way it happens in story books."

Virginia returned his gaze steadily. "Do you really think there is any chance? You are not laughing?"

He a.s.sured her he was intensely serious.

"Well, you are the first person who ever told me that. Uncle Harry said, 'Is it possible, Cornelia, that this is your child?' Cornelia is my mother, and she is a beauty. My brother is awfully good looking, too.

Everybody thinks he ought to have been the girl. I'll tell you who I want to look like when I grow up. Don't you know that young lady who fell in the mud?"

Oh, yes, the Candy Man knew, and applauded Virginia's ambition. He would have been pleased to enlarge on the subject, even to the extent of neglecting business, but just as she began to be interesting Virginia remembered an errand to the drug store, and ran away.

That Sunday morning meeting with Miss Bentley had been reviewed by the Candy Man from every possible standpoint, and always, in conclusion, with the same questions. Could he have done otherwise? What would she think when she discovered her mistake? Who was his unknown double?

The opportunity offering, he made some guarded inquiries of the Reporter.

"Bentley?" repeated that gentleman, as he sharpened a bright yellow pencil. "Seem to have heard the name somewhere recently."

It was a matter of no particular importance to the Candy Man. He had chanced to hear the name given to the conductor by the young lady who was thrown down the night of the accident, and wondered----

The Reporter, who wasn't listening, here exclaimed: "I have it! It was this A.M. Maimie McHugh was interviewing Mrs. Gerrard Pennington over the office 'phone in regard to a luncheon she is giving this week in honour of her niece. Said niece's name me-thinks was Bentley. You will see it all in the social notes later. Covers for twelve, decorations in pink, La France roses, place cards from somewhere." He paused to laugh.

"Maimie was doing it up brown, but she lacks tact. What does she do but ask for Miss Bentley's picture for the Sat.u.r.day edition! I tried to stop her, but it was too late. You should have heard the 'phone buzz. 'My niece's picture in the _Evening Record_!' 'I don't care, mean old thing,' says Maimie, when she hung up. 'Nicer people than she is do it, and are glad to. 'That's all right, my honey,' I told her, 'but there are nice people and nice people, and it's up to you to know the variety you are dealing with, unless you like to be snubbed.' Still," the Reporter added reflectively, "Mrs. Gerrard Pennington and little McHugh can't afford to quarrel. After the luncheon Mrs. G.P. will probably send Maimie a pair of long white gloves, and when their pristine freshness has departed, Maimie will wear them to the office a time or two."

The Candy Man wished to know who Mrs. Gerrard Pennington was, anyway.

"She, my ignorant friend, is a four-ply Colonial Dame, so to speak.

Distinguished grandfathers to burn, and the dough to support them, unlike another friend of mine who possessed every qualification needed to become a C.D. except on the clothes line."

"The joke," observed the Candy Man, "is old, but worth repeating. But did I understand you to say _another_ friend? And am I to infer----?"

"You are far too keen for a Candy Man," said the Reporter, laughing.

"Mrs. G.P. is friendly with the wealthy branch of our family. She regards my Cousin Augustus as a son. Now I think of it, your Miss Bentley cannot be her niece. She could scarcely fall out of a street car. A victoria or a limousine would be necessary in her case."

The Candy Man did not see his way clear to disclaim proprietorship in Miss Bentley, so let it pa.s.s. Certainly, on other grounds his Miss Bentley, to call her so, could not be Mrs. Gerrard Pennington's niece.

Not that she lacked the charm to grace any position however high, but her simplicity and friendliness, the fact that she walked in the country with a stoutish relative who was intimate with the family of the park superintendent, the marketing he had witnessed, all went to prove his point.

Yet on the occasion of a fashionable noon wedding at the stone church near the Y.M.C.A. corner, all this impressive evidence was brought to naught. In the crush of machines and carriages the Candy Wagon was all but engulfed in high life. When the crowd surged out after the bridal party, the congestion for a few minutes baffled the efforts of the corps of police.

The Candy Man, looking on with much amus.e.m.e.nt at the well-dressed throng, presently received a thrill at the sound of a clear young voice exclaiming, "Here is the car, Aunt Eleanor--over here."

The haughtiest of limousines had taken up its station just beyond the Candy Wagon, and toward this the owner of the voice was piloting a majestic and breathless personage. If the Candy Man could have doubted his ears, he could not doubt his eyes. Here was the grace, the sparkle, the everything that made her his Miss Bentley, the Girl of All Others--except the grey suit. Now she wore velvet, and wonderful white plumes framed her face and touched her bright hair. No, there was no mistaking her. Reviewing the evidence he found it baffling. That absurd exclamation about lighthouses alone might be taken as indicating an unfamiliarity with the humbler walks of life.

The Reporter was at this time in daily attendance upon a convention in progress in a neighbouring hall, and he rarely failed to stop at the carriage block and pa.s.s the time of day on his way to and fro.

"Ah ha!" he exclaimed, on one of these occasions, after perusing in silence the first edition of the _Evening Record_; "I see my Cousin Augustus, on his return from New York, is to give a dinner dance in honour of Mrs. Gerrard Pennington's niece."

"I appreciate your innocent pride in Cousin Augustus, but may I inquire if by chance he possesses another name?" The Candy Man spoke with uncalled-for asperity.

"Sure," responded the Reporter, with a quizzical glance at his questioner; "several of 'em. Augustus Vincent McAllister is what he calls himself every day."

CHAPTER FOUR

_In which the Candy Man again sees the Grey Suit, and Virginia continues the story of the Little Red Chimney._

It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon, possibly the very next Sat.u.r.day, or at most the Sat.u.r.day after that, and the Candy Wagon was making money. The day of the week was unmistakable, for the working cla.s.ses were getting home early; fathers of families with something extra for Sunday in paper bags under their arms. And the hat boxes! They pa.s.sed the Candy Man's corner by the hundreds. Every feminine person in the big apartment houses must be intending to wear a new hat to-morrow.