"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 blushing
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--
"Hello," she was saying breathlessly into the mouth-piece. "Hello--?"
"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 glass 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.
His middle name begins with H, but that doesn't tell us what it is, it
might not be--be--_that_, you know, after all."
"Huntington," smiled Katherine. "You are afraid to say Huntington."
"I'm not. Huntington, Huntington, Huntington!"
And then as if it had been the magic signal for calling up the real Mr.
Huntington on the spot, one of the maids brought up his card at the
moment and said that he was awaiting the young ladies in the
drawing-room.
"It will be hard not to tell him," sighed Peggy longingly. "I'd like to
have him know that there was just a gleam of hope, anyway, you know, of
finding--"
"Let's be careful, because there'd just be somebody else disappointed
besides us if it didn't come out right. Peggy, sure as I am that we're
on the right--what do you call it--scent--nevertheless, we must remember
that almost every man in college plays a mandolin--at least half
do,--and H. stands for so many names: Hill, and Hough, and Hail, and,
oh, dozens and hundreds and for all I know thousands. No, it isn't a
clear case yet, so don't raise that poor old man's hopes."
Down the stairs they went sedately, arm in arm. Mr. Huntington had
visited them at the school several times since their return from
Katherine's home. Sometimes he called upon as many of the entire sixty
girls as were about, but more often he asked simply for Peggy and
Katherine.
"I'm awfully glad to see you, Mr. Huntington," Peggy cried, running
impulsively forward, "especially to-day."
"Peggy," warned Katherine.
"I mean after yesterday, you goosey," she frowned at her room-mate, and
then in a very audible aside, "did you think I would give it all away
like that?" She turned to their guest. "You see I was nearly lost in the
snow yesterday, and from thinking I'd never see any of my friends again
to--to seeing them, you know, is a very pleasant jump."
"Well, I heard about it from one of the girls who was passing my house
and stopped in to tell me about your adventure and I hurried over to see
if you're surely feeling all right and how you'd like a little dinner
party at the Holland Hotel in celebration of your escape?--you and seven
or eight classmates?"
"Oh, wouldn't we?" cried Peggy. "I was wondering how I was going to
stand dinner in this place to-night. You know they wouldn't let me have
any last night and if your gr--I mean if the young man that rescued me
hadn't given me some soup before that I'd have starved."
Katherine's foot reached for Peggy's to administer rebuke for what she
had so nearly said. "It will be lovely for us to have the dinner party,
Mr. Huntington," she put in hastily to cover the mistake her room-mate
had made. "Sometimes, just eating here, we do get awfully hungry."
"I never saw you girls when you _weren't_ hungry," laughed their friend.
"It was your continually thinking about something to eat that first led
to our acquaintance, wasn't it?"
The dinner party that evening was a great success. The girls loved
nothing better than to dress up in state and go in a crowd to the hotel
for dinner, but it was an event that came seldom in their lives. They
talked so much about the wonderful lobster and the crisp French fried
potatoes and all the bewildering array of little extras that the great
subject in the minds of the two principal guests was forgotten for the
time, and whether H. stood for Holt or Hamilton became a matter of no
great moment.
When, however, the card of Mr. James H. Smith was brought to the girls
the following afternoon interest quickly revived and they went
downstairs with their best detective manners.
"This is the man whose dog I saved in the storm and who, to show his
appreciation, saved me," laughed Peggy by way of introduction. "And
this,"--presenting her room-mate, "is the nicest girl in the world--whom
I chance to room with."
"My only claim to distinction is rooming with Peggy," smiled Katherine,
offering her hand. "We're glad to see you over here, Mr. Smith--and are
you going to show me the withered rose, too? Because the rose-tree was
mine as much as Peggy's--"
Peggy left Katherine laughing over the brown petals with Jim, while she
went to ask Mrs. Forest to come in and meet their friend. "I think he's
a relative of Mr. Huntington's," Peggy whispered just as Mrs. Forest
rose to accompany her, in order to assure her friend of a hearty
welcome, "but I'm not sure."
"Oh," said Mrs. Forest. "I shall be very glad indeed to make the
acquaintance of any relative of Mr. Huntington's--and you didn't tell me
that before, Peggy--"
"I didn't think of it before," admitted truthful Peggy.
Mrs. Forest sailed into the room, very impressive and rustling in her
afternoon silks, and greeted the young student with unusual cordiality.
"I don't see anything so clammy about her," he thought to himself; she
almost seemed to retain his hand in extra friendliness, as if he were
some favorite nephew.
"Well, well," she was saying, "there is a resemblance, too, now I look
at you. Yes, I think I should have known you anywhere. You have a
relative to be proud of in Mr. Huntington," she continued, "you are a
relative of his, I believe?"
Peggy clapped her hand over her mouth to choke back the exclamation of
dismay that rose from her heart, and two slow tears of mortification
gathered in Katherine's gentle eyes and rolled brightly down her cheeks
at the awful precipitation of events Mrs. Forest had caused.
But the boy was answering and the girls could hardly believe their ears
as they heard him say "Huntington? Why, no, I am afraid you have
confused me with someone else. I am not sure that I have ever heard the
name. I am not related to any one owning it, in any case."
Oh, tumbling air castles! oh, crashing dreams of happy endings! oh, sick
and weak and trembling disappointment, and blank, meaningless future!
Peggy clasped her hands in her lap and leaned forward and stared at the
boy with saddest reproach. He had certainly led them to believe he was
the missing Huntington heir; he had been on their campus when the
rose-tree fell, he had admitted playing the mandolin, he had an initial
H., all just as the fortune teller had said, and yet he was no more Mr.
Huntington's grandson than she was!
The tears were falling so rapidly now on Katharine's cheeks that she
could no longer keep from being generally observed. She sprang up, and
with her handkerchief to her eyes groped her way from the room, and they
heard her a moment later stumbling up the stairs.
Jim looked in bewilderment to the door through which she had gone and
then back to the stricken Peggy with an expression of "What have I
done?" for he thought surely the girls must have given some impression
of him to their principal for a reason of their own and now he had
ruthlessly destroyed the fabric of their tale.
Mrs. Forest herself looked vague and uncomfortable, and after a few
banal remarks, excused herself on the ground that some of the teachers
were expected for tea and she must be in her room to receive them. After
she had swished out Peggy drew a long breath.
"Then you aren't--?" she questioned heartbrokenly, "then you aren't, at
all?"
"Let me into the secret," pleaded the miserable boy. "I always knew
girls were mysterious persons, and that they lived in all sorts of
unreal adventures. Am I scheduled to pass for an incognito villain of
some sort--or--or prince--or anything? Because I tell you frankly, I
ought to have been coached for my part beforehand if that's the case. I
can't be expected to know all these things by intuition. Now I've made
that pretty Katherine cry, and I angered you, and disgusted Mrs. Forest
and yet, cross my heart, and as I live, I've been behaving just as
nicely as I know how. Please, Peggy, clear up the mystery. I've been
working so hard at trig just before exams that I'm in no state to go on
solving problems."
"You see," said Peggy, her mouth going into a smile, and the absurdity
of it all beginning to send a sparkle of fun to her eyes, "it isn't your
fault. We thought you were the missing grandson of our friend Mr.
Huntington, and we've been Sherlocking since last Thanksgiving day to
find him. So when you tallied up with what the fortune teller told us--"
"Fortune teller--Oh, I see!" laughed the young man.
"And then, when your middle initial proved to be H.--why, of _course_,
we thought that stood for Huntington, and I'm disappointed to death that
it doesn't. By the way, what _does_ it stand for?" she asked curiously,
pausing abruptly in her explanation.
She could not have been prepared for the curious expression that came
into Jim's face at this point. His head drooped and three distinct
series of flushes and palings swept his good-looking countenance.
"I don't--know," he said after a time, in a low voice.
"Don't--know?" screamed Peggy with a rising inflection and returning
hope. "Why don't you know? Please forgive my awful rudeness, but if you
only should prove to be the right one, after all, you know, think what
it would mean to Mr. Huntington."
"My mother died a long time ago," the young man said. "I was just a
small boy. I was to be brought up and educated for one purpose--that of
making a great deal of money to--to--well, I might as well tell you,
Peggy, I can trust your understanding,--to pay back a debt to my
mother's father--"
He noticed that Peggy's look of reproach and pain and anxiety had all
faded away and in its place was beaming unmitigated delight. It was an
expression which seemed to him strangely out of accord with the story he
was telling, but, nevertheless, if he could give pleasure to this odd
little flyaway creature by the recital of his life's tragedies, he was
willing to do so.
"When I should have amassed a great fortune I was to be told to whom to
take it, but until an amount she specified had been gotten together in
toto, I wasn't to know my grandfather's address for fear I'd want to
send him the money we owed bit by bit. And, indeed, I should have wanted
that, but for some reason she was unwilling to have anything but the
entire huge sum of the debt turned over to him. No part payments in her
plan. My father had borrowed the money for some oil ventures out west,
and after a good many years those lands have turned out as good as
father's wildest dreams, and I have the money to return to my
grandfather--every cent of it--but, listen, Peggy, even you sitting
there laughing, with your eyes shining, can understand the tragedy and
irony of this--my mother died without ever telling me my grandfather's
name!"
"O--oh," said Peggy, the smile leaving her face as if it had been
suddenly washed away. "That must have bothered you many times."
Then she looked straight ahead of her thoughtfully for a minute. "It's
strange that the oil wells turned out all right, after all," she
murmured absently. "I'm sure Mr. Huntington never dreamed they would."
But the boy, swept back into the past by his own story, was raptly
gazing into the fireplace and paid no attention to her remark whatever.
"I don't think it as romantic, your turning out to be rich," Peggy
continued, "as if you had turned out to be poor, the way I thought you
would, and then Mr. Huntington would have taken you right in and said
the debt was nothing, and he would see that you had everything you
wanted. Yes, that would have been the ideal way."
The boy glanced up at her and smiled whimsically.
"Always that Mr. Huntington," he said, "who is he?"
"Why, your gr--I mean a friend of mine and Katherine's," finished she
lamely.
"And some oil wells figured in his history, too?" the boy wanted to
know. "You seem to be in everybody's confidence, Peggy, though I must
say I don't myself see what there is about you to make people suppose
you'd sympathize with them--when you sit there and beam as happily
through their tragedies as if they were telling you about a picnic."
"I'm sorry--" breathed Peggy, and a real hurt crept into her voice.
Just at this minute Katherine came into the room again, her tears dried
and the lines of unhappiness smoothed out of her forehead. She sat down
gracefully and tried to appear at ease, as if nothing had happened. Both
Peggy and Jim wondered at the self-control she displayed in making a
reappearance after her grief-stricken exit, but they could not know that
Mrs. Forest had tiptoed up to her room and compelled the poor child to
come down again, saying that it was a terrible and foolish breach of
manners for her to have left in any such silly way, and that the only
way she could atone for it was to go down and think how much better it
would have been if she had behaved sensibly in the first place.
So Katherine made a few polite remarks, all the time wondering what
Peggy's happy air meant, and thinking her very shallow indeed to be able
to recover so quickly from so bitter a disappointment as they had just
been through.
"I wonder?" she heard Peggy say, to her increasing astonishment, "would
you think it very queer if I asked you to come right over to Mr.
Huntington's with us for a few minutes? Your story and his are certainly
an awfully unusual coincidence, if they aren't something more. By that I
mean, if they aren't one and the same story. And since you said your
middle initial didn't stand for anything that you were aware of,
mightn't it stand for Huntington?"
"My mother gave my name in at school as James H. Smith, that's all I
know about that part. I usually sign it Holliday, because I like that
name. It might be Huntington. Of course I'll go and see this old man
with you, if that's the way you'd rather spend the afternoon."