Peggy Parsons at Prep School Part 9

"Never do to me," laughed Peggy with a shake of her head. "Just think, Katherine, I didn't ever even have an idea until I actually saw you that I was going to room with anyone like you at Andrews. When I used to wonder what my room-mate would be like, I always thought of some-entirely different kind of a person-and I was afraid maybe she'd want the window shut when I wanted it open, or she'd be a grind and I'd bother her,-and when I saw you-"

"Were you satisfied?" teased Katherine across the table.

"Oh-" sighed Peggy in mock rapture, and then she smiled her sweet, frank, confident, dark-eyed smile straight into her room-mate's eyes. "I was just about as glad as they make 'em," she declared.

Katherine was thinking.

After a while she spoke.

"I know what let's do," she said radiantly, "let's go to Madame Blakey when we get to my house and ask her about the Huntington boy."

"Who's Madame Blakey?"

"Oh, I forgot you wouldn't know. She's a clairvoyant and reads the future out of a little gla.s.s of water. Yes, and you needn't smile.

Sometimes it comes out just as she says. I've never been, but some of the business men in our town believe in every word she says."

"I-I'd be afraid," Peggy demurred.

"She doesn't tell you the horrid things-just the ones worth while knowing-don't you think it would be thrilling to go?" Katherine poised her ice-cream spoon half way to her mouth while she waited for Peggy's wild delight in the scheme which she felt sure must come.

"I-I-don't know-" Peggy disappointingly murmured. "Does she have curtains painted with red and gold Turkish half-moons and all that? And does she fade off into a-" she shuddered, "a-trance? Because I don't want to see anything like that, honest, I don't. Of course, I know the trances are just make-believe, but I don't like them."

"No," Katherine hastened to rea.s.sure her, "sometimes I think it would be fun to go to one who did those things, but this one doesn't make much of a show of it, I've heard, and if the folks would only let us go-"

"Perhaps we owe it to Mr. Huntington," Peggy decided at last, "to find out where his grandson is for him, even by clairvoyant means like that.

Perhaps we ought not to let an opportunity or possible chance slip by-"

By this Katherine realized she had won her wish and that her little friend was beginning to be as eager for the adventure as she was and was merely trying to translate it into a favor to somebody else before plunging into it heart and soul.

By this time the girls had finished their delightful dinner and they left a quarter on the waiter's little tray with all the dignity in the world. My, how independent, how experienced, how completely adult it made them feel to be deciding the amount of tips and then handing them out with such sweet grandeur of manner. The waiter smiled and bowed as he pulled out their chairs, but they themselves were so exactly the type of traveler that any waiter would prefer to wait on, with their grave consultation with him as to the choicest dishes and their evident enjoyment of life in general, that perhaps he would have been nearly as polite had they given him only ten cents-but, of course, it's impossible to say for sure. Waiters are but waiters, and they have certain expectations and have grown accustomed to seeing them realized.

Back on the perilous journey through snow-coated vestibules the girls took their swaying way, laughing light-heartedly at each swerve of the train and trying to work out some Sherlock Holmes system by which they might be sure of finding their own car.

"I knew a girl once," said Katherine, "whose car was taken off at Buffalo and hitched to another train while she was promenading on the platform outside, and all the baggage she had in the world went off to school, leaving her behind. It was a horrible experience-"

"Must have been," sn.i.g.g.e.red Peggy, "but if you're trying to scare me into thinking perhaps we won't find our car at all you'll have a hard time of it, because we're in it now!"

And so they were. There were the familiar fur coats over the arms of the Pullman seats at last, there were the copies of the gayly covered magazines that they had left behind them, and, indeed, there it all was-home. Home as only a Pullman car can be home to young people who adore traveling and have plenty of interesting experiences and company to while away the journey.

"Ah," they cried, sinking back into their seats, "this is nice, isn't it, after all that walk? How smoothly the train runs when you're sitting still, but how jogglety it goes when you walk through the cars."

"Oh, well," said Peggy, with a mighty yawn and stretching her little locked hands before her lazily, "I'm perfectly happy, and I feel so contented I'm almost-sleepy."

"Almost-" indignantly laughed Katherine, "I feel free to say that you're the most perfect imitation of a sleepy head that I ever saw-imitation, I said, Peggy, imitation-" she cried, ducking, for Peggy had reached for her hair to pull it.

"Let's imitate sleeping heads instead of only sleepy ones then,"

suggested Peggy when all her attempts to wreak vengeance upon her room-mate had proved unsuccessful.

"Porter, will you make up our section next?" asked Katherine as that white-coated individual went by. And Peggy stored it away in her mind that when you wanted to address him you called him "Porter." It was difficult to explain exactly why, but this impressed her as just the highest mark of knowing the proper thing that she had seen yet. Now if _she_ had been forced to ask him the same question she had a feeling that she would have begun with "Say."

"How shall we sleep-you in the upper, or me, or both of us in the lower so that the upper needn't be let down at all and then we can have plenty of room to dress in our berths in the morning without b.u.mping our heads."

Peggy agreed to this last plan as the best, and a few minutes later the two snuggled down into the cold sheets to be lulled almost instantly to sleep by the rhythmic motion of the train and the even sound of its metal click, click on the rails.

"Good-night," murmured Peggy sleepily just before drifting off into the great s.h.i.+ning world of dreams with their marvelous adventures that do not tire but rest and equip the dreamer afresh for the series of real events crowding in with the new day.

"Goo-ood-night-" answered Katherine in an even drawlier tone, but her room-mate was already asleep and did not notice it.

CHAPTER IX-THE FORTUNE TELLER

Oh, the glory of waking up in the morning and then before you have time to wonder where you are, seeing the telegraph poles flying by! On a train, on a train, on a train, Peggy's joyous thought kept time to the sound of the wheels on the rails. After looking interestedly out for a few minutes on a barren sort of white crusted country, level as a prairie and without house or building of any kind, Peggy turned and shook Katherine heartily by the shoulder.

"Poor child," she shouted into the other's reluctant ears, "I hate to waken you, but open your eyes and tell me if you think we're nearly there?"

"Where?" murmured Katherine and sank back into the peace of slumber.

"Why, there, THERE, at your home-will-you-wake-up?" Each of the last words was accompanied by more vigorous shaking, "as-I-said-" shake, shake, "I-hate-to-waken-you-"

"Yes, you do," reproached Katherine in perfectly normal tones, turning staring mockingly at her room-mate. "Yes, you hate it-I thought you were a wreck, you shook me so hard."

"I am a wreck after all that difficulty to make you wake up," declared Peggy serenely. "Now, let's hurry and go to breakfast."

"Do you know what your new name is going to be as soon as we get back to school?" threatened Katherine.

"No," indifferently.

"Pig Peggy."

"Oh," said Peggy, "well, I'll look you up one in the dictionary,-maybe in the _Latin_ dictionary, and then you'll never know what it means and can't pay me back for it."

It is surprising how quickly two girls can be ready for breakfast when they hear the waiter crying out "Last-call for breakfast-" through a rocking train.

Grape-fruit, coffee, and toast was what they ordered, and then they laughed to find that every other girl in the diner was eating exactly the same thing. For grape-fruit, coffee, and toast is the college and school girl train-breakfast the country over.

"I feel as if I'd been away a hundred years," said Katherine excitedly as the train at last pulled into the station. "Oh, they'll all be down at the train, I wired them to. And how proud I'll be to show them you, Peggy, and tell them that you are the one they've heard so much about in all my letters since the very first, which was full of your rose-tree episode."

The porter had already gone ahead with their bags, and they, peering eagerly out of the windows as they made their way to the platform, sought to catch a glimpse of Katherine's family.

As they stepped off it seemed to Peggy that a veritable whirlpool engulfed them. On every side were enthusiastic people kissing her and Katherine indiscriminately. And she in her gladness to get there and her happiness in meeting with such friendly acceptance kissed them back with impartial enthusiasm, Katherine's mother and father, her younger sister, an aunt, and three "kid brothers"-these were the reception committee that were now hustling the girls to the big waiting automobile that belonged to Katherine's father and overwhelming them with expressions of pleasure and welcome.

The house, when they came to it, was a great homey affair, with many rich rugs and pictures that did not, however, dazzle by their magnificence but seemed to fit into the general atmosphere of comfort.

Peggy, who had never visited in so wonderful a place before, danced from attic to cellar, as light as thistledown, and sent the whole family into roars of appreciative laughter at her nave and hearty approval of it all.

"You're home, now, Peggy," Katherine said.