Peggy Parsons at Prep School Part 14

On releasing her friend, she proceeded to prepare for bed, saying she was too exhausted to sit up another minute. But she talked as she slipped on her kimono and folded back the couch cover from the cot bed on her side of the room.

"And, Katherine," she came to the wonderful part at last, "who do you suppose he was? One of the people we tried to kill with our rose-tree-yes, he had our rose-"

"Rose-tree?" cried Katherine, and then her face, growing whiter and whiter in its excitement, she clasped her hands together and screamed out: "The fortune teller, the fortune teller! She spoke of that-quick, Peggy, hurry, what's his name-is one of his initials H? Peggy, don't keep me in suspense a minute longer-what is his name?"

Peggy was sitting up in bed with a queer expression in her face. As Katherine finished she looked across at her with a blank expression.

"Why, I don't know his name!" she cried.

CHAPTER XI-THE INITIAL H

"Why, do you suppose I dreamed all night of mandolins?" questioned Peggy, sitting up in bed with a blanket hugged around her shoulders next morning.

"Why, because," said Katharine, "the clairvoyant woman said that she saw a young man in a college room playing a mandolin,-you remember? And he answers all the rest of her requirements, the walking in the cold, the meeting the girl-you, and the rose-tree incident. Now, Peg, did you think to ask him if he played the mandolin?"

"No," said Peggy contritely, gingerly testing the cold floor with her bare feet, "no,-and how are we going to find out now?"

"You're a fine Sherlock," cried Katherine, "but, then, it's always the Watsons of this world that do the real work while the Sherlocks get the credit."

"I have just one clue," sighed Peggy humbly.

"Well?"

"The boys at the tea house called him Jim."

"_Jim!_" repeated Katherine in keen disappointment and disgust. "Not an H in it!"

"No," Peggy agreed, "and there are so many Jims."

"M.-Jim, Amherst-fine lot of information," murmured Katherine.

There really didn't seem to be much that could be done, so the girls went to recitations as on other days. But they could not help the feeling that they had really stumbled upon the very person they had made it the business of their year to find, and so their answers to the professors' questions were often somewhat vague and wandering, and once when the mathematics teacher asked Peggy to draw a right angle triangle, she said she hadn't studied her mandolins to-day, and sat blus.h.i.+ng furiously throughout the rest of the lesson.

It was late in the afternoon when one of the maids called Peggy to the telephone. She ran down the stairs with a wild and unaccountable hope in her heart-if she should only have the opportunity to find out everything so that Katherine wouldn't have so much cause to be ashamed of her-if she could only ask him if he _did_ have a mandolin-

"h.e.l.lo," she was saying breathlessly into the mouth-piece. "h.e.l.lo-?"

"Miss Parsons-" a laughing voice came over the wire and Peggy instantly framed her lips to her question. It should not get away from her this time-all this news that she must have.

"I called up Mrs. Forest and asked if the young lady I rescued from the storm was all right after her chill. I told her I was the one who had been fortunate enough to be there, and she said, quite politely, that Miss Parsons wasn't hurt in the least by the experience. That's how I got your name."

But all this while Peggy was interpolating wildly: "Do you play the mandolin? Do you play the mandolin?"

And now that the voice was pausing for her answer, her words came clear and distinct, "Do you play the mandolin?"

"Do I _what_?" in astonishment.

"Do you play the mandolin?" monotonously.

"Why, why-how funny your first remarks always are. Yesterday in the storm when I nearly ran you down you cried out 'Friday'-it didn't seem to have a bit of sense to it,-and now right while I'm trying to tell you something you ask me in a parlor conversational tone if I-if I--"

"Well, _do_ you?" she insisted desperately.

"Yes, but-"

"Oh, goody, goody, then you're the one!" "What one?" mightily puzzled-and a trifle impatient.

"I can't tell you yet-I don't even know your name."

"Why, of course, I want you to know my name, that was partly why I called up," in an injured voice. "It's Jim Smith."

"Only that?" her disappointment was keen.

"James H. Smith, if you must have it all," somewhat surlily.

"O-oh," there went singing across the wires the breath of Peggy's rapture. "Isn't that lovely."

"No one ever thought it was particularly so before," the young man answered. "I'm glad you like it. Now, what is all of your name?"

"Peggy is the part you don't already know," she confessed, "and I like it better than the last part."

"I do, too," he chimed in heartily, "I won't need to say the last part at all any more, will I?"

"N-no," Peggy laughed. "Considering who you are. Only of course you don't know yet, do you?"

"Don't know who I am? Well, now, I always had a faint suspicion every time I looked in the gla.s.s that I was myself."

"I've said everything wrong," apologized Peggy sadly. "But you'll understand after I've seen you sometime again and told you about everything."

"Anything you say is all right with me, anyway," the voice answered quickly. "I wouldn't have you think for a minute that it wasn't. After the game way you almost went through death by paralysis-"

Here they both laughed, until the wires sang again and again.

"May I come over to-morrow afternoon and-meet the ogre and get her approval of me, and all that?" the man's voice asked at length.

"Yes, and you can meet somebody nicer than the ogre, too," generously promised Peggy, "my dearest-in-the-world room-mate, Katherine Foster.

Oh, she is the splendidest girl! And the prettiest! And the smartest, too."

"To-morrow afternoon, then? Awfully glad that you're all recovered from yesterday-good-by."

Peggy murmured her good-by and flew back upstairs to tell the wonderful news to Katherine-that he was, that he _was_, that he WAS!

"I can hardly wait to tell Mr. Huntington," cried Katherine, "can you?"

"Oh," said Peggy doubtfully, "I don't think we have quite enough to go on yet to tell him about it, do you? _We_ think it is true but, after all, we have only the word of that crazy black velvet fortune teller.