Peggy Parsons at Prep School Part 7

The auctioneer's voice was already announcing the next article. This was an alluring thing in green tissue.

"Somebody's heart and soul was in this," Katherine read out impressively from its advertis.e.m.e.nt.

Florence Thomas bid it in for seven beans and opened it to find the sole of a worn out slipper and a heart-shaped candy box.

The pile steadily dwindled but Katherine did not pick up Mr.

Huntington's package until near the end. It certainly did not look inviting. Peggy's heart gave a bound as it was lifted high in the air and the auctioneer began to praise it. She felt so sorry for Mr.

Huntington that he did not know how to make his offering as attractive as theirs. She was sure n.o.body would bid their last few beans on that when there were still several delectable looking bundles on the table.

And, to make it worse, the inscription that was supposed to extol its virtues merely said, "This isn't worth as much as people think." Why, mercy, no one in his right senses could think it worth _anything_ done up so roughly as that! In a swift generous impulse Peggy bid "Ten beans!" in a loud voice, and with a glance of surprise and pity, Auctioneer Katherine handed her the prize in silence.

Peggy rather hesitated to open the poor little thing there before them all, but, glancing up, she saw Mr. Huntington's eyes upon her with a curiously bright gaze. Something about the antic.i.p.ation in his look rea.s.sured her and she tore off the wrapping hastily at last. There was a red cigarette box inside and she blushed furiously.

"I guess this was meant for the one man of our party," Florence said, peering over her shoulder and tapping it humorously.

But Peggy was beginning to be certain that the box had only been used because it was the right size and that there was something-possibly even something interesting-inside. Gingerly she lifted the cover and drew out two slips of paper folded, then unwrinkling them on her knee she looked down and gasped, while a wave of brighter crimson swept over her face.

The first was a check for five thousand dollars! It was made out to Andrews, with a ticket attached saying, "For the new gymnasium." The other was a check for one hundred dollars made out to bearer, with a note to explain, "for use in giving other people kind little parties as you all have to-day given me!"

What did it mean? Peggy stared across at her friend, and found him smiling delightedly that she had been the one to bid it in. _Poor_ Mr.

Huntington! Never again could they call him that-why, why-Mr. Huntington was _rich_, fabulously and wonderfully and _generously_ rich, and they had never known. Through her mind flitted the memory of his remark about the recurring rumors that caused people to come to him in search of donations to various things. Again she thought of that odd phrase of his, "When one is piling up one's fortune-"

"Oh," she gasped, the deliciousness of their "charity" party sweeping over her. "Oh, how strange everything is all of a sudden! I think, perhaps, I'm asleep or something, this is just the crazy, impossible way things go in dreams. Florence, please pinch me."

But when Florence did, she yelled "Ouch" in a voice that was wide awake enough, so she knew those uncanny checks in her hands were real.

"The gymnasium is to be named Parson's Hall," smiled Mr. Huntington, "that's the condition, and it's really to be Peggy's gift to the school.

The school would never have had it-that is from me-on any other score.

The small check is Peggy's own-and I waited until I saw your eyes watching me, child, before I laid the package on the table, for I hoped you'd be the one to bid for it out of the kindness of your heart."

Mrs. Forest had turned pale at the mention "gymnasium" and now she jumped from her chair and made her way to Peggy's side with an almost youthful alacrity.

"How-wonderful, how delightful, how kind, how thoughtful, how perfectly splendid," she cried, reading the check with dazzled eyes. "Mr.

Huntington, I thank-"

"Thank Peggy," he said, somewhat shortly and walked over to the fireplace.

Peggy's heart was full of happiness. To be able to give something to Andrews that would last always and would bear her name!

How beautiful that was! This school that had already meant so much to her in friends.h.i.+ps and worth while knowledge not all out of books,-how very glad she would be to come back to it some day and see the neat little gymnasium, with her name on the building, full of romping girls that loved each other as she and Katherine did, and had the same glorious, care-free outlook on life that she had now!

"I wish I could say-half of what I'm thinking," she murmured, looking gratefully up at Mr. Huntington with moist eyes.

He merely smiled. "Or I wish that _I_ myself could, after a day like to-day," he answered after a time.

A kind of quiet settled down on the girls and they talked in low pitched voices, laughing only in a comfortable undertone while the sense of homelikeness and good feeling grew and grew and struck deeply into each heart, bringing those inner visions that belong to Thanksgiving day, but need just the right atmosphere to make them perfect.

Sixty separate groups of dear home people were being vividly pictured in that one great room, sixty different houses were suddenly mentally erected within that house. Ever and ever so many beloved voices were imagined right in among the murmuring _real_ voices of the friends about them.

And, contradictory as it may seem, keeping pace with their happy contentment in the moment went a big, aching, sweeping longing in each girl's mind for just one minute in mother's arms, one instant of her dear, real, understanding presence. And from under sixty pairs of lashes bright tear drops were fought back, while each girl, wrapped up in her own heart-ache, believed that she alone was experiencing anything like this and that the others were all as free from such homeward thoughts as they had been when screaming with laughter a few hours ago over the grinds in the dining-room.

Thus all our experiences we go through much more in common with the rest of mankind than we suppose. But this is especially so in school and college, where a great number of young people of the same age and of more or less the same station in life are placed in exactly similar environment. The same tears, the same laughter, the same desires and the same satisfactions all girls who have gone away to school have felt in varying degree. And now here sat this roomful of girls, each suffering in the same new and unexpected way at the same time and each believing her mental situation to be strangely different from anything ever experienced in the world before.

The spell had even affected Mrs. Forest, too, for when she rose to gather up her flock she gave a great sigh and spoke with a curious gentleness that the girls had never a.s.sociated with her pompous tones.

"I think, young ladies, it is time we went back to our school, now. And I'm sure we'll join in thanking Mr. Huntington for the best time we have had this season. And we are very grateful for his most kind gift to Andrews. If he would care to come to our school musicales and entertainments n.o.body would be a more welcome guest than he. Get your wraps, young ladies, and we will take our departure."

The girls scrambled up from the floor and went reluctantly to the hall, where they slipped into great fur coats, and fastened rubbers on their daintily shod feet.

"Good-by, good-by," they called from the door, and troops and troops of them went down the whitened walk, laughing back expressions of appreciation.

Peggy had whispered in Mrs. Forest's ear just as she was about to leave, and Mrs. Forest had nodded her head graciously. So Peggy went to Katherine and drew her back from the crowds of those preparing to go home, and when the rest had gone the two girls went back to the fire and sat down in great arm-chairs on either side of it, while Mr. Huntington mused into the blue flames and began to see there a picture of something that had happened long ago.

"So you want to hear why I have to be alone on Thanksgiving day unless outsiders take pity on me, do you?" he asked, for Peggy had begged him at the door to tell her about his daughter and the grandson that would be older than she. It was daring, but she felt very strongly that someway Mr. Huntington wanted to talk, wanted to tell someone, and she believed she and Katherine and he were good enough friends now to make it possible for him to tell his story to them.

"Well," hesitated the old man- The girls settled themselves more comfortably in the great chairs and leaned forward, their chins in their hands, while the whimsical light of the fire played over them now in rose-colored flickers of light, now in lavender brilliance.

"I suppose I'd better begin at the beginning," said Mr. Huntington, and in a quiet, halting, reminiscent voice began his strange story.

CHAPTER VII-MR. HUNTINGTON'S STORY

"Our family has always been rich,-I cannot remember when the Huntingtons were not supposed to have everything they wanted. I myself have not let the great estates of my ancestors slip through my fingers as the people about here imagine. Instead,-it may surprise you-I am richer far than any Huntington has ever been before."

Peggy gave a delighted little gasp.

"Yes, because the values of my holdings have gone right on increasing and I have used practically nothing for myself, you see. People outside think that no man would appear to be poor as I do, with none of the luxuries of life, and really be rich, for the common rule is the other way, isn't it? Even at the cost of mortgaging house and home most people buy the outward shows of wealth in order to seem to be rich even though they are poor.

"My daughter was the most beautiful girl in the state when she was young. Her mother died when she was eighteen and so just as she began to want parties and entertainments I was obliged to do all the planning and looking after her myself. Lovely as she was, and rich beyond the dreams of neighborhood avarice, I naturally thought she would marry some kingly young fellow with a position equal to her own. But she didn't-she married-"

He looked for a long time into the fire, and Peggy ventured to break the silence, "but that wasn't a very democratic way of looking at things, was it? Don't you believe a rich girl might like a very poor man, and the other way round, too?"

"She married, with my reluctant consent, a young fellow who immediately tried to get me to sell off great portions of my property and turn the money over to him for investment in some crazy oil well he had out west.

He tried in every way to get control of this or that piece, using fraudulent means, it seemed to me. Finally he-borrowed a vast sum of money from a man down state-it was easy for anyone so safely connected with the Huntington family to borrow whatever he wanted-and this he sank in the well, which never amounted to anything and gave him no means of paying even the interest on his debt. With the interest greatly overdue, and no prospects, howsoever dim, of getting back his money, the rash investor from down state came to me and demanded that I reimburse him for my son-in-law's rascality-though perhaps that is too strong a word to use."

"And you did-_didn't_ you?" begged Peggy, anxiously.

"Of course," agreed her friend. "He knew I would, though he never mentioned the transaction to me himself, but left the news for his creditor to break.

"They lived with me here five years and when my little grandson was two years old, I planned how I could do the most for him, arranging his education and travels in my mind so that all the bright future I had hoped for my daughter might be realized in him. But when incidents like the one I just told you of began to happen frequently and any considerable sum of money I gave my daughter went also into the stupid oil proposition that never yielded any profits or, indeed, paid back a cent of the money that it ate, I determined to go on with the thing no longer and talked to my daughter and my son-in-law so plainly that they agreed to go away and not involve me in such transactions again."

Katherine timidly interrupted, "I suppose they-didn't write much after they'd gone?" She was still puzzling to account for the complete loneliness the old man had endured for so many years-even the conduct of his disappointing son-in-law did not, to her mind, wholly explain why a man would be content to forego all manner of acquaintance and friends.h.i.+p ever afterward.

The fire crackled loudly and protestingly, as if it, too, shared her thought and would like an explanation. Peggy never stirred nor moved her eyes from the thoughtful and sympathetic contemplation of Mr.

Huntington's face.

"No," the old man hesitatingly answered Katherine. "No-You see-, well, I am afraid I spoke very harshly to the man and my daughter heard. He made no kind of defense whatever and-even then I-I was ashamed, but I knew right to be on my side and I felt very long-suffering as it was. My daughter caught up my grandson and faced me. I shall never forget the proud expression in her poor, hurt eyes."