The Little Red Chimney Part 6

"Now, really," insisted Uncle Bob, "I don't see why you should worry.

You are almost certain to meet him again, and----"

"I shall die if I do," Margaret Elizabeth declared; but somehow the a.s.sertion failed to ring true.

"From what you have said he is plainly a gentleman, and altogether matters might be worse," Uncle Bob concluded.

Miss Bentley shook her head. "I don't see how they could be," she insisted.

CHAPTER SEVEN

_Shows how the Candy Wagon is visited in behalf of the Squirrel, and how pride suffers a fall; how Miss Bentley turns to Vedantic Philosophy to drown her annoyance, and discovers how hard it is to forget when you wish to._

"When I reflect upon the small weight attaching to true worth unsupported by personal charm, I am tempted to turn cynic."

Dr. Prue closed her bag with a snap and lifted her arms to adjust a hatpin.

"Youth and beauty take the trick, that's a fact." Uncle Bob laughed as if he found it a delicious comedy.

They stood before the office window. At the gate the Apartment Pigeons were fluttering around Margaret Elizabeth, while her ladys.h.i.+p gravely admonished them for some piece of mischief.

"I believe she is taming the terrors," remarked the doctor.

"She had them all in the other afternoon," said Uncle Bob, "sitting cross-legged on the floor like little Orientals, while she told them stories. Margaret Elizabeth can manage them!" His tone thrilled with pride.

"Yes, and Miss Kitty Molloy will drop anything she has on hand to work for Miss Bentley; the market-man picks out his choicest fruit for her; and so it goes, if you call it managing. Well, I must be off. Good-by."

As Dr. Prue went out, Margaret Elizabeth, having dismissed the pigeons for the time being, came in, and sat down at her desk to finish a letter.

She wrote: "Yes, Uncle Bob and Cousin Prue argue as much as ever, and I suspect that more often than not I am the subject upon which they disagree. I am in a state of disagreement about myself, father dear.

Society is absorbing beyond anything I dreamed of, and if I had not promised you to stop and think for at least ten minutes out of the fourteen hundred and forty, I fear I should have already become a real Society Person."

At this point Uncle Bob looked in. "Well, how many parties on hand now?"

he asked.

Margaret Elizabeth laid down her pen and counted them off on her fingers, beginning with a tea at five, theatre and supper afterward, and so on, till the supply of fingers threatened to become exhausted.

"Go on, I'll lend you mine," said Uncle Bob. "Prue says," he added, "that it is enough to kill you, but you look pretty strong."

"She wouldn't mind if I worked my fingers to the bone for her hospital or the Suffrage a.s.sociation, but I want a little fun first, Uncle Bob."

Margaret Elizabeth supported an adorable chin in a pink palm and regarded her relative appealingly.

"That's what I tell Prue. It is natural you should like best to stay at Pennington Park, and go about in a splendid machine. I don't blame you in the least, and I don't wish you to feel bound to come down here when you don't really care to. Much as I love to have you, I shall not be hurt." Uncle Bob nodded at Margaret Elizabeth with a rea.s.suring smile that in spite of intentions was a bit wistful too.

"I don't believe you understand, and for that matter, neither do I. I love you best, and the Little Red Chimney, and this darling room. There aren't any fairies at Pennington Park, but--I do like the whirl, the fun, the pretty things, and----"

"The admiration, Margaret Elizabeth; out with it. You'll feel better,"

said Uncle Bob.

"Well, yes, people _do_ like me, and oh, I must show you something!" She sprang up, and from a box lying on the sofa she took a filmy, rose-coloured fabric. "What do you think of this?" she demanded, shaking out the s.h.i.+mmering folds before his surprised eyes.

He rose n.o.bly to the occasion. "Why, it looks like a sunset cloud. Is it to wear?"

"Certainly. It is a pattern robe. Miss Kitty across the street is going to put it together for me. She is a genius. Sunset cloud is very poetic.

Thank you, Uncle Bob. And now I must finish my letter before I go over to Miss Kitty's, and then I promised the children I'd go with them to buy some nuts for the squirrel. A bunny who has the courage to live so far downtown should be rewarded. I wish you had been here, Uncle Bob, to join our society." Margaret Elizabeth sat down with the rosy cloud all about her, and laughed at the recollection. "Never again will they throw a stone at his bunnys.h.i.+p. We laid our hands together so, and swore by the paw of the cinnamon bear and the ear of the tailless cat, to take the part of our brother beasts and birds. It was all on the spur of the moment, or I might have done better, but they were impressed."

[Ill.u.s.tration: UNCLE BOB]

"I should think so, indeed," remarked her uncle. "You are a sort of philanthropist after all."

"Yes, I have a very marked b.u.mp. That reminds me, if I don't see Dr.

Prue, you tell her, please, that I am going to take Augustus McAllister to the Suffrage meeting."

Having returned her robe to its box, Miss Bentley sat down at her desk and wrote furiously for five minutes, then folded her letter, put it in the envelope, and addressed, stamped, and sealed it, concluding the business with a resolute fist. Shortly after, in the familiar grey suit, with the little grey hat jammed down anyhow on her bright hair, she went forth, the box containing the sunset cloud under her arm.

Homage and admiration attended upon her within Miss Kitty's humble establishment, and waited outside in the persons of the adoring pigeons.

Virginia, having been unable to keep the story of the Little Red Chimney to herself, must now in consequence share her ladys.h.i.+p with the flock.

But certain privileges were hers--to walk next to Miss Bentley and clasp her disengaged hand; to carry her bag or book; to act as her prime minister in keeping order.

Thus Miss Bentley went her triumphant way that afternoon, all unconscious that there was any triumph about it. Not that she was wholly unaware of her own charm. As she confessed to Uncle Bob, she knew people liked her, and the knowledge was pleasing. She was now on her way to be gracious to the Candy Man, and in this connection she had rehea.r.s.ed a neat little scene in which she stood by and allowed the children to make their purchases, and then at the right moment asked easily if there had been any more accidents on the corner of late, adding something about his kindness in helping her up, and so on. The Candy Man would of course touch his cap, for from Virginia's account he was rather a nice Candy Man, and reply, "Not at all, Miss," or "That's all right"; then she would smile upon him and the incident would be closed.

The first half of the scene went off perfectly. The Candy Man was selling taffy to a nurse-maid when they approached, and if he saw who was coming, and if his heart was in his mouth, and if he felt a wild longing to escape from the Candy Wagon, he gave no sign. To Margaret Elizabeth, as they waited, he was a Candy Man in white jacket and cap, and nothing more.

The pigeons fluttered joyously. Miss Bentley uttered an impersonal good afternoon, Virginia advanced, a silver quarter in her palm, and demanded chestnuts for the squirrel. The bag was filled and held out to her, and as she handed over the quarter in exchange she explained, gratuitously, "We'll perhaps eat _some_ of them ourselves."

At this the Candy Man looked up with a smile in his eyes, and met the glance of Miss Bentley, who immediately forgot all she had intended to say, for these were the eyes that were not the eyes of Augustus. There was no excuse for arguing the question. She knew it.

The point was, after all, Margaret Elizabeth concluded in the solitude of her own hearth-stone, not whether she had been equal to the occasion to-day--and she hadn't--but that he on a former occasion had been guilty of base behaviour. If this were a real Candy Man, one might excuse him, but he plainly was not. There was a mystery, and she loathed mysteries.

She was annoyed to the point of exasperation. She would dismiss him from her mind now and forever.

Uncle Bob, reading the evening paper in the dining-room while Nancy set the table, admitting as she pa.s.sed back and forth an occasional savoury odor from the kitchen region, became aware of sounds in the hall which betokened some one descending the stairs in haste. The next moment Margaret Elizabeth stood in the doorway.

"Uncle Bob," she said, as she drew a long white glove over her elbow, her face shadowed by her plumy hat, "you remember you said it might be worse, and I insisted it couldn't be? You were right, it is infinitely worse."

With this she was gone, and a premonitory buzz of great dignity and reserve from the street presently indicated that she was being borne away in the Pennington car.

And now it was that Miss Bentley discovered how impossible it is to forget when you wish to. You may a.s.sist a treacherous memory with a memorandum, but no corresponding resource offers when you wish to forget. You may succeed in diverting your thoughts for a time, but sooner or later, ten to one, in the most illogical manner, the very thing you seek to avoid forces itself upon your attention. What could have seemed further away from the Candy Man than ancient Hindoo Philosophy? And into this she plunged to drown her annoyance, and incidentally help a fellow member of the Tuesday Club. Margaret Elizabeth was ever ready to fill in a breach, and when Miss Allen came to her in despair, having been positively forbidden to use her eyes, she obligingly agreed to help her.

The subject grew, as all subjects have a way of doing. It was a providential ordering, Uncle Bob remarked, enabling the writers of papers to take refuge from criticism in the impressive statement that it is impossible to treat of the matter adequately in so short a s.p.a.ce.

Margaret Elizabeth laughed, and crossed out a paragraph at the bottom of her first page, and then set out for the Public Library.

Seated in the Reference Room, with more books than she could read in a year on the table before her, behold Miss Bentley presently inconsolable for lack of a certain authority she chanced to remember in the college library at home. The whole force of the Reference Room mourned with her, for Margaret Elizabeth in the part of earnest student was no less captivating than in her other roles.

"I know where there is a copy," said the youngest and wisest of the force, "but it won't do you any good. Mr. Knight, the man the children call the Miser, has one."

"I'll go and ask him to let me see it. I'd like to know a real live miser." Margaret Elizabeth closed the book she had in hand and rose.