The Little Red Chimney Part 5

The sentence was concluded in a milder tone, owing to the coffee.

"Nancy, give Mr. Vandegrift another saucer," said Dr. Prue.

"My dear, there is no need. I can pour this back," he protested. Then, a fresh saucer having been subst.i.tuted, he went on: "Take a landscape----"

"I haven't time for landscapes this morning, father. I am due at the hospital at nine. You'll have to excuse me."

"Well, what I was going to say is, that it is the combination of all her separate qualities and characteristics, manifested in ways and otherwise, that is beautiful--that const.i.tutes beauty. The something that makes her Margaret Elizabeth, that subtle--" Uncle Bob was talking against time.

"Now, father," Dr. Prue pushed back her chair and rose, "there is nothing subtle about Margaret Elizabeth, and you know it. She is a thoroughly nice, quite pretty girl, and that is all there is to it. If those Penningtons don't spoil her." With this the doctor disappeared.

"Miss Prue and her pa do argufy to beat the band," Nancy remarked to Jenny the cook as she waited for hot cakes.

"That's all, Nancy. I shan't want any more," her master told her when she carried them into the dining-room. "You needn't wait." As the door closed behind her he smiled to himself. He always enjoyed the leisurely comfort of those last cakes.

The morning sun shone in brightly, emphasising the pleasant, substantial appointments of the room and the breakfast table. Its glint in the old silver coffee pot was a joy to him; the unopened paper at his elbow spoke to him of the interests of a day, like it, not yet unfolded. Uncle Bob after his own fashion savoured life....

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. PRUE]

The sun had travelled around the house and was looking in at the west window of the Little Red Chimney Room, when Virginia discovered her ladyship sitting on a low stool by her hearthstone deep in meditation.

"I saw the smoke," she announced, "so I thought I'd come over."

"I am glad to see you," Margaret Elizabeth said, waking up. "But what smoke do you mean?" And now it developed that although Miss Bentley was of course aware of the Little Red Chimney, and indeed preferred it red, she had not understood its significance.

In amused interest she listened while Virginia explained. "That dear, ridiculous Uncle Bob!" she cried, hugging her knees. "And what fun, Virginia!"

Virginia nodded. "Like a fairy-tale," she said.

"So it is," Miss Bentley agreed, and became again lost in thought.

From the other side of the hearth Virginia watched her. Her ladyship to-day wore a grey-blue gown with a broad white collar, and she contrasted harmoniously with the soft browns and greens of her surroundings. Uncle Bob should have been there to enjoy the glint of the sunshine in her hair.

It was an un.o.btrusive room, abounding in pleasant suggestions if you sat still and let them sink in: books around the walls, a few water colours and bits of porcelain, an open piano, a work table, a broad divan with many cushions, ferns in the windows, and the fire.

Virginia, however, saw nothing of this; she was looking at Margaret Elizabeth. "The Candy Man wanted to know where you stayed when you weren't here," she remarked at length.

Miss Bentley came out of her brown study in great surprise. Who in the world was the Candy Man?

"Why, you know the Candy Wagon on the Y.M.C.A. corner! And don't you remember how you fell in the mud, and the Candy Man helped you up, and I gave you your bag, and the Miser was there too?" Virginia spoke in patient toleration of Miss Bentley's strange lapse of memory.

"Naturally I was rather shaken and didn't notice. Was it a Candy Man who picked me up? And a miser, you say?" Chin in hand Margaret Elizabeth regarded her visitor. "It is all very interesting, but why should the Candy Man wish to know about me?"

Virginia owned that she had mentioned the Little Red Chimney to him, and that when the ident.i.ty of her ladyship had come to light, he had exclaimed, "I might have guessed!"

"Well, really," said Miss Bentley, sitting up very straight, "what business is it of his to be guessing about me?"

"He isn't Irish like Tim," Virginia hastened to a.s.sure her. "He's very nice. He's a friend of mine."

Margaret Elizabeth laughed. "That makes it all right, I suppose; and if he picked me up--But who is the Miser?"

"He lives over there," Virginia pointed toward the front window, "in that stone house with the vine on it. Aleck says he has rooms and rooms full of money."

The house she indicated was almost black with time and soot, but its fine proportions suggested s.p.a.cious, high-ceiled rooms, and whatever its present condition, a past of dignity and importance.

"How extremely interesting! What a remarkable neighbourhood this seems to be!"

"Is it like a fairy-tale where you stay when you aren't here?" Virginia asked.

Sudden illumination came to Margaret Elizabeth. "That is just what it isn't," she cried. "It's splendid and beautiful, and all sorts of things, except a fairy-tale. I wonder why? I love fairy-tales and Little Red Chimneys."

"So does the Candy Man," exclaimed Virginia, charmed at the coincidence.

"It must be fun to be a Candy Man," she continued. "It isn't much like a fairy-tale where I live. I should like to live in a sure-enough house with stairs."

"You talk like a squirrel who lives in a tree. And speaking of squirrels, you and I must buy some nuts for our bunny sometime, from this Candy Man. If he picked me up I suppose I ought to patronise him. All the same, Virginia," and now Miss Bentley spoke with great seriousness, "I wish you not to say anything about me to him. It is rather silly, you know."

Virginia did not know, but she longed to do in every particular what Miss Bentley desired, so she promised.

The opal lights in the western sky were the only reminders left of the sunny day, when Uncle Bob, seated comfortably in the big armchair, listened to Margaret Elizabeth's confession, the flames dancing and curling around a fresh log meanwhile. In size it was but a modest log, for the fireplace was neither wide nor deep like those at Pennington Park, but the Little Red Chimney did its part so merrily and well that upon no other hearth could the flames dance and curl so gaily. At least so it had seemed to Margaret Elizabeth, sitting there chin in hand, after Virginia's departure.

"And you are certain you never met him before?" Uncle Bob ran his fingers through his hair and frowned thoughtfully.

"Perfectly certain. You see the resemblance was remarkable, all but the eyes, and I thought Mr. McAllister had simply waked up. People are sometimes stiff when you first meet them. He knew who I was, for he called me Miss Bentley. Naturally I thought it was some one I had met--particularly when he mentioned the accident. You see, in getting out of the machine at the Country Club a day or two before I caught my skirt in the door and fell, striking my elbow. It didn't amount to anything, though it hurt for a minute, but Aunt Eleanor made a great fuss. He may have been somewhere about at the time, but I didn't meet him. And it makes me furious," Margaret Elizabeth continued, "when I think of his not telling me."

"Telling you that you didn't know him?" asked Uncle Bob.

"Certainly, he should have said at the very beginning, 'Miss Bentley, you are mistaken in thinking you know me.'"

"Ha! ha!" laughed Uncle Bob.

"Now what are you laughing at?" his niece demanded. "Honestly, don't you think he should have?" But she laughed herself.

"Well, perhaps," he owned, reflecting, however, that if Margaret Elizabeth looked half so alluring that morning as she did now in her grey-blue frock, with her bright hair a bit tumbled, it was asking a good deal of human nature.

"Now, of course, Uncle Bob, this is strictly confidential. I wouldn't have Dr. Prue know for the world. It is bad enough to have Aunt Eleanor smiling sarcastically, though she doesn't know half. I think I have at length quieted her, and the great Augustus is entirely mollified." She paused to laugh again, then continued tragically, "Sympathy is what I need now. To begin with, it was the most perfect day--the sort to make you forget tiresome conventions."

Uncle Bob nodded. "Perhaps he forgot, too," he suggested.

Margaret Elizabeth bit her lip. "That's true. I must try to be fair.

He had nice eyes, Uncle Bob--with a twinkle in them." A smile played over her lips, her dimple came and went. She gazed absently at the curling flame. Suddenly she rose from her ottoman, and seated herself bolt upright on the sofa with one of the plumpest cushions behind her.

"All the same it was inexcusable in me," she declared sternly.

"What was?" asked her uncle.

"The nonsense I talked. About a Fairy G.o.dmother Society! No doubt he was laughing in his sleeve all the time."

"Oh, I guess not. It sounds quite original and interesting. Have you copyrighted the idea?"

"Uncle Bob, you are a dear. Some time I'll tell you all about it--when I get over feeling so terribly, if I ever do."