They could see Mr. Huntington sitting in the library, reading, as they
came up the snowy walk. The room looked warm and peaceful and there was
a contented expression on his face as his white head bowed over the
book.
The wind was howling around them and it slapped the tattered remnants of
vines against the porch as it had done on that first day Peggy worked
her daring heart into a state courageous enough to carry her to the very
door of Gloomy House. Inside, in contrast to the bluster without, the
library looked as cozy and homelike as a room could well be when only
one person lives in it.
"Peggy," said Katherine, "we may be going to disturb his peace for
nothing."
"Pshaw," said Peggy, the light of high adventure shining in her eyes,
"I'd rather have all sorts of surprises and disappointments and hurts
and aches and shocks in my life than just have it all a kind of dull
monotony, and I always give other people credit for feeling the same
way. I guess Mr. Huntington would rather have a _chance_ of everything's
coming out right than never know about it at all."
"I agree with Peggy, whatever her wise little meaning is," laughed Jim.
"I think he would, too."
They were on the porch by this time, and Peggy saw Mr. Huntington's head
lifted inquiringly as the sound of their footsteps reached his ears.
Then as the old bell jangled through the house he rose hastily and
laying his book face downward on the table came slowly to the door.
For some seconds he fumbled with the lock and then threw back the door,
while a sudden look of glad surprise went across his face at the sight
of Peggy and Katherine. At first he did not notice their companion. The
three entered the hall and then Peggy said, "Mr. Huntington, this is Mr.
Smith, and I wanted you to meet him for a very special reason."
"Yes?" the old man said, shaking the other's hand, "I'm very glad, I'm
sure. Come into the library, all of you, and tell me all about it. Now,
what can I do for the young man?"
For Mr. Huntington had no thought in his head but that here was some
young football player who needed funds, or the representative of some
charitable organization that wanted a contribution. And, since Peggy
brought him, he should have it.
"Oh," said Peggy, with a little pout. "You're always thinking that. And
I don't blame you, for I suppose lots of people do want things and come
and ask you for them. But Jim is awfully rich, and--and--" she broke off
helplessly and glanced beseechingly at Katherine for help as to how to
go on.
For the last few minutes Mr. Huntington had been studying Jim with a
curious intentness, and a startled expression had even begun to creep
into his face. With a vague gesture, as of one who is trying to recall
some long gone memory, he drew his hand back and forth across his
forehead. There had been ghosts of a kind in Huntington House right up
to the time when Peggy and her fifty-nine little friends had driven them
out forever. But there had never been a visible one before, never more
than a haunting and accusing thought, not a red-cheeked, fresh-faced
young man that somehow did not make Mr. Huntington think of a young man
at all, as he sat watching him, but rather made him recall a woman, who
had defied him in a moment of pride and gone away from him and out of
his life, leaving no trace.
There was something about the finely drawn young mouth. Something about
the blueness of the eyes--Mr. Huntington started and addressed the boy
in a sharp voice.
"You remind me very much of--of a relative of mine," he said abruptly,
"you said your name was Smith?--or Peggy said so--Of course, there are a
thousand Smiths about here, but Peggy said she had brought you here for
a very special reason. I must beg you to tell me what it is at once.
This relative of mine married a man named Smith. I don't think I
mentioned his name to you, Peggy?"
"No," said Peggy, shaking her golden head. "If you had I'd have found
him lots sooner!"
The old man looked quickly from one to another of the little group, and
in a breathless rush of words Peggy told him all the similarities
between his history and that of the young man.
"And if it doesn't all _match_," she cried, "then I'll eat my Greek
books!"
Mr. Huntington walked over to his desk,--a big, ancient affair with a
dozen little curious drawers that pulled out by means of bright glass
knobs. From the smallest of these he drew forth tremblingly all that it
contained, a single photograph, and approaching the boy, held it out to
him.
"Have you ever seen that face?" he asked tensely.
With a troubled air the young man took it and gazed straight into its
pictured eyes, his face tightening as he did so.
"It's--my mother," he said simply, after a pause. "And I have a picture
just like this one. Is it true, then, sir, all this romance these girls
have given me a part in--and are you indeed my grandfather?"
There was a note of awe in his voice as he rose before the old man,
holding out his hand.
The realization that a life-old dream, long since given up and buried in
his mind with the things that were not to be, was actually coming true,
that the very picture the library fire had conjured up for him evening
after evening as he sat alone and lonely, gazing into its depths,--this,
with its sudden rush of emotion, brought a kind of illumination to the
figure of the old man as he stood there, and seemed to shed for a moment
the passing glory of youth once more over his face.
Swiftly and silently Peggy went to Katherine and took her hand and, with
their fingers on their lips, the two stole to the library door and
thence, unnoticed, from the room. A few minutes later they were running
down the frosty walk, their eyes happy and their cheeks aglow, and their
hearts kept time to their running feet.
"If our mathematics only solved as nicely as that," Peggy murmured
longingly. And Katherine pressed her hand, and they danced along on the
sidewalk until the people passing turned wistfully to gaze after them,
wondering how it would seem to have such an overflow of spirits that one
must run and skip and laugh out loud to express them.
"Let's have all the girls we can pack into the room in for a midnight
celebration," suggested Katherine as soon as they had flung off their
coats in their own room.
"Good girl," chirruped Peggy. "About ten people--our most special own
crowd. Hurry up and be ready for dinner--and is there any butter out on
the window ledge?"
Katherine craned her eager head out of the window into the cold. "Not a
bit," she said. "We have a can of condensed milk left, though."
"Fine," cried Peggy, counting off on her fingers the butter, the sugar,
and the alcohol, the butter, the sugar, and the alcohol--"for I don't
suppose there is any alcohol, is there, friend infant?"
"'Fraid not," sighed Katherine.
From this an outsider might suppose that the girls were planning to
concoct some sort of intoxicating beverage for their innocent little
midnight party. But it was only the preliminary preparation for the
inevitable fudge. And the alcohol was to _run_ the chafing-dish, and not
to go _into_ it.
Just before dinner, Peggy, asparkle in her golden satin, so nearly the
color of her lovely hair, went shouting through the corridor, "Alcohol!
Al--co--hol!"
And behind the closed doors every girl knew that somewhere there was to
be a party and, recognizing the voice, ten of them guessed that they
would be invited. It was not until her second trip, however, that her
call brought results in the form of an opening door and a nice, full
bottle of denatured alcohol generously thrust into her hand by one of
the hopeful ten.
"You know me, Peggy," hinted the owner of the contribution. "I'm fudge
hungry, too. What time is the happiness?"
"When you're invited you'll find out," retorted Peggy, hurrying off with
the alcohol and humming a little tune.
When the girls went in to dinner a mysterious whisper went round. It was
"Save your butter, and ask for two helps."
The butter balls remained untouched on each of ten plates as a result,
and were finally gathered together very surreptitiously onto one plate
just before the dishes were cleared for dessert. Under the auspices of
Peggy this one dish was covered with a saucer and sneaked down into the
folds of her napkin.
When the sauce that they invariably had for dinner on this night of the
week was set before them with a general dish of granulated sugar to make
it sweet enough, she pointed toward the sugar bowl and several of the
girls looked miserable, because sugar is an awfully hard thing to take
away unobserved.
But tea was served, and three of the girls asked for just cups and
saucers because they liked to fix theirs up themselves, they would put
in the sugar and cream and would then pass them for the tea to be poured
in. But the empty cups safe in their possession, they each asked
earnestly for the sugar, and slowly and painstakingly, talking all the
time so as to divert attention, they shoveled in spoonful after spoonful
until the cup was full. Then with a sigh of relief at a difficult duty
well done, they sank limply back in their chairs, only being sure to
remember to be passing something when any of the waitresses approached,
so that their hands would cover the too-sweet tea-cups with nothing in
but sugar.
"Won't you have some wafers?" Florence Thomas would ask Helen Remington
in a worried voice every now and then, lifting the plate and offering it
to her solicitously. Of course, the girls weren't sitting at Mrs.
Forest's table this week, or it never could have been managed and they
would not have thought of trying. But just by themselves it wasn't
impossible. When dinner was over and their principal and the teachers
had moved toward the drawing room, they, with wild sidelong looks and
terrified glances this way and that, sniggering conversation that didn't
mean anything, gathered up their trophies, hugging them as close as
might be, and covering them with folds of satin gown and little nervous
hands. Then, following, wherever possible, some girl who was going
uprightly forth with nothing that she shouldn't have, the little guilty
procession filed out and rushed for the stairs, stumbling and laughing
in their haste and leaving, all unnoticed by them, a tiny tell-tale
trail of sugar up the broad varnished stairs.
All these savings were taken to the room where Peggy and Katherine
lived, and then the girls went their separate ways serenely, some to
study and some to bed, each knowing that she would be summoned at the
proper time to partake of the fruit of her spoils.
"What shall we do, are we sleepy or do we want to sit up a while and
talk?" Peggy and Katherine, the hostesses-to-be, consulted each other.
It was characteristic that they used the plural, for it always happened
that they were either both sleepy or both wide awake.
"Well," Katherine suggested, after a few moments of deliberation, "I say
that we tuck all up with nice soft quilts and talk. We can talk about
the Huntingtons and how mean Mrs. Forest is sometimes, and--and
everything, until it's time to start the chafing-dish and call the
girls." "Midnight" didn't mean the stroke of twelve to them at all. It
was any time in the late, late hours, along about half-past ten or
eleven, say.
In their pink and blue quilts they talked and talked in the darkness,
for, of course, Mrs. Forest and the teachers mustn't see any light
gleaming under their doors after ten o'clock. Soon their eyes grew heavy
and the thoughts of fudge began to mix themselves up curiously with
dreams.
They were two little tumbled over figures, fast asleep, Peggy on her
couch and Katherine on hers, when the indignant guests, wondering why
they had not been summoned to the party and deciding to come without
waiting for the formal bidding, strode in upon them, with much flutter
of silk and crepe kimono, and patter, patter of slippered feet.
"Well, did you ever!" cried Florence Thomas. "Light the candles
somebody; Doris start the chafing-dish, and Helen measure out that
butter,--"
"Is--it--time--to--get--up?" came in muffled accents from Katherine's
couch, and a moment later a candle gleam flickered into her drowsy eyes.
"Oh, my stars, girls!" she cried, sitting up at once and staring around
wildly, "do you think this is a nice way to come to a party?"
Peggy was breathing evenly, and she turned fretfully to the wall when
Florence shook her. "Oh, very well, Miss Fudge Party," Florence
murmured, "we'll see if you won't wake up,--" and she went over to the
wash pitcher behind the screen and dipped a wash-cloth in its cold
contents.
"Ha ha," she laughed, in imitation of a stage villain. Wringing out her
weapon she approached the couch of the unconscious sleeper, full of
delighted anticipation.
Just as the terrible and efficient awakener was about to slap down on
its victim's placid face the victim opened her eyes and looked up at the
plotter reproachfully.
"Oh, I heard your fiendish plot--I heard the water sousing around," she
said, "but I thought there was no use waking up till the last minute,--I
was in the middle of such a delicious dream."
"Well," sighed Florence, much wounded, because, of course, you can't put
a wet wash-cloth on a waking person's face. "All that energy wasted.
Girls, do hurry up the fudge, so that I can comfort myself for having
been 'foiled again.'"
The room, with the little whispering group of girls in it, some on the
couches and some on the floor, garbed in all the delicate shades of
boudoir attire, pale blue, pink, and rose, saffron yellow, lavender and
dainty green; with the tiny spurts of golden candle flame dotted here
and there on table and mantlepiece; with the hot, chocolate-smelling
fudge bubbling away in the chafing-dish, looked like some fairy meeting
place, with all the adorable fairies assembled.
When the fudge was done they put the pan out of the window and hoped
that it wouldn't fall down and all be lost. It didn't, and, before it
had fairly cooled, they cut it and lifted the squares in their eager
fingers,--great, rich, soft, wonderful squares of delight,--and ate them
with greedy pleasure, down to the last, last crumb.